With all the expeditions he鈥檚 been a part of, all the technology he鈥檚 developed, all the discoveries he鈥檚 covered, I鈥檓 used to Albert Lin being one of the more interesting people in a room鈥攐r even the most well-known. But walking down the street in Quito, Ecuador, I didn鈥檛 realize he was this famous.

We are headed to a coffee shop when a woman with her son recognizes him and hollers out the window of her car.

鈥淓xcuse me!鈥� she says. 鈥淲e know you!鈥�

She barely comes to a stop before getting out to take a picture, but in her hurry forgets to take the car out of gear. It lurches forward, and she dives back in to put it in park.

Fifteen minutes later, a young woman approaches to ask for a picture and tell Lin how much she loves his National Geographic TV show, Lost Cities, in which he goes looking for archaeological evidence of vanished civilizations. In fact, she wants to show him exactly which episode she just watched.

This happens pretty often in Central and South America. Lin has done a lot of work here. Unlike the programs that dominate cable TV by rehashing tired mysteries or paranormal encounters, Lin鈥檚 show lives in the freshly turned soil of archaeological inquiry. He鈥檚 usually sharing new findings during an episode about, say, the empires that once encompassed Guatemala, Ecuador, and Peru. Often, those findings show that ancient civilizations were a lot more sophisticated than we thought. His work helps dignify Indigenous history. But it鈥檚 not just that.

He played the part of a motivational icon, because being inspirational was how he moved through the world.

Before getting coffee, Lin toured the (ROMP) building, a converted split-level with balance bars in the living room and plaster dust floating out of a backyard workshop. That鈥檚 where a team of prosthetists uses recycled parts to design and build custom devices for amputees all over South America. Lin is himself an amputee and came to Ecuador as part of clothing brand Cotopaxi鈥檚 sponsorship of ROMP鈥檚 annual mountain climb fundraiser.

He shook a lot of hands at ROMP. He jogged with people testing out their听 carbon fiber running blades. He played the part of a motivational icon, because being inspirational was how he moved through the world. Sometimes, it could be a little much.

鈥淵ou know how some people lose their shit when they meet Taylor Swift?鈥� sobbed L茅a Richer, a United States鈥揵ased prosthetist, when she met him. 鈥淵ou鈥檝e been my Taylor Swift for years.鈥�

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Early on in his career, video game designer Jason Rohrer embarked on a strange quest. Instead of trying to make huge blockbusters like Halo or Grand Theft Auto, he produced games about what it means to be human. His work was an argument that video games could be about more than shooting robots and aliens. He wanted to make people laugh, love, and cry.

His game Passage is a five-minute meditation on the beauty of life and the inevitability of death and part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art. A Game for Someone was designed to only be played 2,000 years in the future and is currently buried somewhere in the Nevada desert.

鈥淗e created a nesting doll game that could not be completed in a single human lifetime called Inside a Star Filled Sky,鈥� Patrick Jagoda, a game designer and English professor at the University of Chicago told me. 鈥淗is games have been very, very high concept.鈥�

But now, Rohrer is taking his art from the digital space and into the real world with a treasure hunt based in New England. On Thursday, Rohrer launched the hunt, called Project Skydrop. The first person to solve his seemingly straightforward puzzle will find a gold statue and bounty of cryptocurrency. But given the ambition and scope of his previous work, most everyone familiar with his games鈥攊ncluding me鈥攊s wondering: What does Rohrer have up his sleeve this time?

The Details of the Hunt

Project Skydrop is like a treasure hunt from the future. Instead of a brittle, yellowed map or a cryptic poem guiding searchers, this hunt is largely digital. The treasure itself is a sculpture made of 10 oz of solid gold鈥攚orth about $23,000鈥攅ngraved with a Bitcoin wallet recovery phrase that unlocks a further crypto bounty: 50 percent of the pool of $20 entry fees to join the hunt. The sculpture isn鈥檛 buried, or even hidden. It鈥檚 just sitting out somewhere in the open in New England.

The clues? A combination of aerial photographs that start unhelpfully close to the treasure鈥攐ne foot off the ground鈥攁nd a circle on a map that starts out unhelpfully far away鈥攁 500-mile radius. Every day, the aerial photographs zoom out to provide more context about the treasure鈥檚 surroundings. Every day the circle shrinks鈥攄own to a one-foot diameter search area after three weeks.

鈥淚 know it’s not gonna be solvable on day one,鈥� Rohrer told me from his home in New Hampshire. 鈥淎nd I know it’s definitely going to be solvable on day 21.鈥�

鈥淒efinitely solvable鈥� is an attribute that few other treasure hunts have had over the years. Most have failed in one way or another.

Forrest 贵别苍苍鈥檚 million-dollar chest of gold took ten years to find, and five searchers died in pursuit. By the end of it, in 2020, Fenn was the subject of several lawsuits. Because of this chaos, the treasure鈥檚 finder did his best to remain anonymous, and to this day the general public doesn鈥檛 know exactly where the treasure was hidden. It鈥檚 a mess.

Twelve treasures were buried in major American cities for The Secret, a treasure hunt created by Byron Preiss in 1982, but so far only three have been found. Preiss died in 2005. That hunt was simply too hard.

Even the original armchair treasure hunt, Masquerade, from 1979, ended in scandal when it turned out that the finder had used inside information to locate the jewel-encrusted golden hare that people were looking for.

The legacy of modern treasure hunts, in other words, is controversy, scandal, and failure. They end badly. They look a lot like video games that needed a little more playtesting before being released.

鈥淭reasure hunts in the past haven’t really worked that well,鈥� Rohrer said. 鈥淭hey kind of fundamentally break.鈥�

Project Skydrop, then, is a game designer鈥檚 response to those failures. The shrinking-circle, closed-timeline design of the hunt keeps it from dragging on for decades. The final location of the treasure and the identity of the finder won鈥檛 be a mystery: in order to claim the Bitcoin, the finder is required to upload a video of themselves with the treasure when they find it.

Rohrer and his creative partner, Thomas Bailey, have also taken steps to make sure that no one gets hurt by another searcher.

鈥淟et’s say the treasurer’s worth a million dollars, right? It’s life-changing money. And as you come over the crest, you see someone a few feet closer to the treasure than you. What do you do? Do you start running? Do you start screaming? Do you start shooting? So we had to figure out a way to prevent that as best we could.鈥�

Averting Another Forrest Fenn Debacle

What they came up with is a clause in the entry agreement that searchers must 鈥渙btain the treasure peacefully,鈥� and in the hope of enforcing that rule Rohrer and Bailey fitted the area around the treasure with cameras鈥攍ike a bizarro, non-violent Hunger Games.

Those cameras upload to the Project Skydrop website in real time, so barring technical difficulties, anyone who pays the hunt鈥檚 entry fee can watch the treasure hunt unfold, including the moment someone finds and claims tens- or hundreds-of-thousands of dollars worth of treasure.

鈥淚f you think about that moment,鈥� Rohrer said, 鈥渁nd what that moment will feel like in the grand scope of all human experience, it’ll just be an incredible moment, right?鈥�

It will be quite the moment. But is it art? Is it very, very high concept?

鈥淚t is possible that he made a treasure hunt and that’s it, full stop,鈥� Patrick Jagoda told me. 鈥淏ut based on the 20-or-so games that he’s made in the past, I bet you there are layers of meaning to what this thing is.鈥�

Perhaps sending people out into the world in the pursuit of a solid gold sculpture is a statement on being a celebrated video game creator, but not a particularly well-compensated one. Perhaps it鈥檚 a commentary on our increasing dependence on screens and pictures and satellite imagery to navigate the natural world. Perhaps he just wants to make the real world feel a little bit more like a video game.

When I asked Rohrer directly if there was more going on here than meets the eye, he laughed because even if there was, he said he wouldn鈥檛 be telling me about it.

But then he told a long story about his most successful game, One Hour, One Life, in which players build a family and then a civilization over the course of generations and every hour of gameplay equals one human lifespan. One Hour, One Life incorporates a lot of the themes of his early games鈥攖he meaning of life and death, and听the way our actions today echo into the future.

As the creator of this game, however, he can see how people are playing it鈥攖he degree to which a digital life can take over a real one.

鈥淲hen the game first came out and I was looking at statistics, there were a number of players who played it ten hours a day, seven days a week for like 11 months,鈥� he said.

鈥淚’ve interacted with a number of members of this community and, you know, a lot of them are like 25 years old, living at their parents house, spending all day playing video games. And some of the interactions I’ve had have been pretty heartbreaking. It’s like, 鈥業 know that I’ll never have a family of my own. And the only way I get to feel like the joy of parenthood is through your game. Thank you, Jason.鈥�

鈥淚 feel like I want to make something that kind of lifts them up out of that and kind of energizes them or something鈥攇ets them out of their chair.鈥�

When Forrest Fenn launched his treasure hunt, he did it to get kids 鈥渙ut of the game room, off their texting machines and into the mountains,鈥� he said.

Fenn spent much of his life in the mountains. Rohrer has spent much of his life making video games. But they鈥檝e arrived at a similar place.

鈥淟ike yesterday I climbed to the top of a mountain with my wife and two younger children and our dog,” he said. “And we picked wild blueberries up at the top of the mountain. And it was a really hot day and once we got down to the bottom of the mountain we swam in these beautiful cascading, crystal clear waterfalls. That felt like living to me.鈥�

In other words, Rohrer is still exploring what it means to be human. He鈥檚 still trying to make people laugh, love, and cry. But as the creator and curator of all that screen time, it seems like he鈥檚 also now trying to atone for something.

The post Forrest Fenn Part Two? A New Treasure Hunt Has Kicked Off in New England. appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

By the time Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary reached the summit of Mount Everest in May of 1953, the British had been trying to climb it for 31 years. This was the country鈥檚 ninth expedition, in addition to two reconnaissance flyovers commissioned by England鈥檚 wealthy elite in the 1930s. Meanwhile, several other countries had been trying to find their way to the summit at 29,035 feet, continually threatening to grab the prize away from the Crown.

In 1947, a rogue Canadian engineer named Earl Denman got to 22,000 feet before being turned back by a storm. In 1951, Denmark鈥檚 Klaus Becker-Larsen made it to the North Col鈥攁 23,000-foot ridge on the Tibet side of the mountain鈥攂ut turned back because of rockfall. In 1952, a Swiss expedition failed to make the summit, perhaps only because their Sherpas got nervous about the weather and the expedition leaders were too polite to push them on. If the 1953 British expedition was unsuccessful, France had the permits in hand to try next.

You can鈥檛 really overstate how badly England needed this. Over the previous decade, a yearslong World War II bombing campaign鈥攖he Blitz鈥攈ad destroyed over a million British homes, and the cost of victory put a damper on the economy that lasted for years. In the summer of 1947, British control over came to an end, resulting in widespread violence and massive loss of life. A few years later, in early 1952, their wartime king, George VI, died suddenly, a few months after undergoing an operation for lung cancer. In short, England was taking some lumps, and the nation was looking for something to celebrate. The coronation of Queen Elizabeth II coincided nicely with Everest鈥檚 climbing season.

So when Tenzing and Hillary reached the summit at 11:30 A.M. on May 29, their feat was a source of pride for the whole empire. Britain had proved itself Great. And as the climbers descended, the race was on to tell the world.

James Morris, a London Times reporter, was embedded with the expedition and had been waiting at a high camp鈥�21,000 feet鈥攆or news of success or failure. (Morris underwent a gender transition in the 1970s and took the name Jan Morris.) It was hours before she got word, at which point Morris rushed down toward Base Camp in gathering darkness. When she got there, her only means of communication were the mail runners鈥攁 half-dozen trusted Sherpas who carried updates from the expedition 200 miles from Base Camp to Kathmandu. There had never been bigger news to deliver.

But this is where the story gets fuzzy, imprecise, and very nearly lost. Because there鈥檚 almost no record of what happened on that run to Kathmandu. And a few weeks after the message arrived, the runner who carried it was dead.

The post The Man Who Raced to Tell the World That Mount Everest Had Been Climbed appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

In the summer of 2020, the decade-long Forrest Fenn treasure hunt ended in a tangled mess of conspiracy theories, wild accusations, and protracted legal proceedings. Fenn wouldn鈥檛 say who found the treasure. Worse than that, he wouldn鈥檛 say where it had been hidden. For a treasure hunt that was supposed to be real-life Indiana Jones, the finale left everyone jonesing for more information.听

Cue the frivolous lawsuits. One accused Fenn of ending the hunt on purpose and lying when he announced the treasure was found in Wyoming. A different one accused the chest鈥檚 then anonymous finder of hacking a plaintiff鈥檚 emails and texts to steal the solution. A third implied that Fenn was lying when he said he never told anyone where the treasure was, because pop star Taylor Swift referenced that she knew the location of the treasure in her lyrics and music videos. I wish I were making that up.

But now the most recent Fenn lawsuit has shown that Fenn did actually tell someone exactly where the treasure was, very soon after it was found. He told Yellowstone National Park鈥檚 chief ranger, Sarah Davis.

The Fenn treasure hunt began in 2010, when the wealthy art dealer hid a chest filled with gold and jewels from his personal collection 鈥渟omewhere in the Rocky mountains,鈥� then published a 24-line poem containing clues to its location.

Jack Stuef, a 32-year-old medical student at the time, found the treasure in 2020. He revealed his identity to 国产吃瓜黑料 in December of that year, just before being added as a defendant to one of the lawsuits鈥斺�渕y texts and emails were hacked鈥濃�攚hich forced his hand.

Five searchers died in the course of the hunt. Fenn collapsed and died at home in Santa Fe in September of 2020. Over the past two years, all but one of the lawsuits have been dismissed. Which brings us to Jamie McCracken, the听Florida man now hunting for treasure in a New Mexico courtroom.

McCracken accuses Fenn of moving the treasure four times鈥攚henever McCracken was getting close to it, he says. He also claims that Fenn purchased property near his search spot to keep tabs on him, and that Fenn was lying every time he said that the chest was still in the same place he鈥檇 originally left it. McCracken, who is representing himself in court, indicated he would show evidence that Fenn was still alive after his death was announced. He says Fenn misled the entire community on the hunt.听

Karl Sommer, the lawyer for 贵别苍苍鈥檚 estate, put it differently.听

鈥淚 mean, this is bizarre shit,鈥� he said.

Whatever it is, McCracken is pretty good at submitting legal paperwork. He declined to comment until his case is resolved, and it鈥檚 set to begin proceedings in June. In preparation, Sommer subpoenaed Stuef for a deposition. He needs Stuef to say that he solved the clues in the poem fair and square, and that the treasure was exactly where Fenn originally left it. If Sommer questions Stuef, however, McCracken also gets a turn. Stuef would be under oath and could be compelled to reveal the exact location of the treasure.

And it turns out, officials at Yellowstone really want to avoid that scenario.

In April, assistant U.S. attorney Kimberley Bell filed a motion to intervene in McCracken鈥檚 case, arguing that publicizing the exact location of 贵别苍苍鈥檚 treasure would result in a surge of visitors and damage to the park. In support of that motion, the park鈥檚 chief ranger, Davis, signed an affidavit stating that in August 2020, two months after the treasure was found, she had a Zoom meeting with Fenn and Stuef, during which they told her where the treasure had been stashed. Davis surveyed the area the following week and concluded that the spot was not set up to handle the increased foot traffic that revealing the location might bring. (The affidavit doesn鈥檛 specifically state that the treasure was in the park, just that the location is owned by the U.S. government and managed by the Department of the Interior. But c鈥檓on.)

For years, that the treasure was found in Yellowstone, which is why Stuef wouldn鈥檛 share any specifics: found property in a national park is supposed to be turned in to the park supervisor. In a sense, by putting the chest in Yellowstone, Fenn booby-trapped his hiding spot. Whoever found the treasure would have to maneuver very carefully if they wanted to keep it.听

But Stuef passed the test. And now we know how.

The McCracken lawsuit made public photos of the chest in situ, still embedded in the ground, as well as some private emails between Stuef and Fenn that occurred immediately after the treasure was found. And Stuef鈥檚 first email reads like it was written by a committee of lawyers.听

鈥淚鈥檓 aware that over the years you have intimated that you may like to give these items to the person who found it,鈥� Stuef wrote. 鈥淚f that is the case with me, I would be happy to receive them, but I think it would be prudent that I first return your treasure to you so you can fully verify that it belongs to you. At that time, you can make your decision on whether to keep it all, give it to me, subtract or add items, or whatever else you may decide.鈥�

Stuef emailed Fenn on June 5, apparently leaving the chest in place overnight. He says he retrieved it June 6, which raises some questions. Did Stuef figure out all that precise language on his own that day? Were there instructions in the chest about how to proceed? The latter seems more likely. Fenn said he spent $5,000 on a lawyer figuring out the potential finder鈥檚 legal situation before he placed the chest. And he always said that there was a kind of fail-safe inside. That he鈥檇 know when it was found.

But then, it also seems like Stuef knew he was going to find the treasure long before he did. Maybe he had time to prepare. According to a document that recently turned up on , Stuef applied for tax status and apparently moved to Puerto Rico鈥攚here there is almost no capital gains tax鈥攊n September 2019, nine months before he found the treasure.

I put all this to tax attorney Larry Brant, who I consulted with back when the treasure was first found.

鈥淚t looks like someone is really thinking this through,鈥� he said.听

On May 4, judge Francis J. Mathew denied the government鈥檚 motion to intervene in the case, saying that doing so would cause undue delay, and that the government has other avenues鈥攍ike an injunction in federal court鈥攊f it wants to keep the location of the treasure a secret. His view seemed to be that the location of the treasure became public information when Fenn published his poem.

So for now, the deposition will proceed, and 贵别苍苍鈥檚 hiding spot could soon be revealed. The end of the treasure hunt may finally be drawing to a close.

When I interviewed him in 2014, Fenn said he wanted to make the contents of his treasure chest look like a pirate movie, so he filled it with the most visually stunning items he could find: diamonds, rubies, and gold.听

鈥淭here are hundreds and hundreds of gold nuggets,鈥� he said. 鈥淭wo of them are larger than a hen鈥檚 egg.鈥�

Gold nuggets. Yellow stones. It was right there this whole time.听

Peter Frick-Wright is a contributing editor and the host of an Apple Original podcast about the Fenn treasure, coming later this year.

The post Revealed: Forrest 贵别苍苍鈥檚 Treasure Was Hidden in This National Park appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Over the weekend, the number of people in the world who know precisely where Forrest Fenn hid his treasure听supposedly doubled. We know the finder was a man, from 鈥渂ack east,鈥� according to Fenn, and that he wishes to remain anonymous.听

Fenn, of course,听is the former art-and-antiquities dealer who in 2010 hid a box of treasure somewhere in the Rocky Mountains and wrote a poem with nine clues leading to its hiding place. The finder, on the other hand, is anyone鈥檚 guess.

So until we know more about where it was, who found it, and what he plans to do now, the hunt is in a maddening kind of limbo: it is both over and not, the chest is simultaneously newly found and perhaps also gone forever. Call it Schr枚dinger鈥檚 Treasure.

贵别苍苍鈥檚 听included a promise of more information and photos in the days to come, but Dal Neitzel, who runs the website Fenn used to post the message, says Fenn has now backed away from that statement, saying the treasure鈥檚 location is 鈥減ersonal and confidential.鈥� Some are anxiously waiting for more information. are basically coughing 鈥渂ullshit鈥� into their hands, saying the whole thing is a scam and the contents of his chest are ill-gotten gains.

Absent proof that the treasure was ever out there, it doesn鈥檛 take a ton of natural skepticism to feel very suspicious about what鈥檚 been going on.听And if that鈥檚 your disposition, this 鈥渁nonymous finder鈥� business reads like a convenient way to call off the hunt without having to admit that it never existed in the first place. After all, five people have died in pursuit, and hunters have started filing lawsuits claiming Fenn misled them.

But when it comes to finding valuables, anonymity isn鈥檛 all that suspicious. There鈥檚 a culture of discretion in the treasure community. Longtime hunter W.C. Jameson wrote in his memoir, : 鈥淎nnouncing a discovery often leads to negative and unwanted developments, primarily the loss of any treasure that may have been found.鈥� In other words, finders are not keepers if they make a big fuss about it.

In this case, the problem with telling everyone about the location of 贵别苍苍鈥檚 treasure is that there鈥檚 a good chance it doesn鈥檛 legally belong to the person who found it. It varies by state, but in general, treasure found on private property belongs to the land owner, not the finder. Pretty much the only way to stay out of court is to negotiate the split of any findings ahead of time.听

On federal land, like national parks and national forests, treasure hunters need permits to keep anything they find, and even then you鈥檙e going to need lawyers, because 贵别苍苍鈥檚 treasure doesn鈥檛 fit into any category for which the federal government has a neat and tidy legal definition. It wasn鈥檛 鈥渓ost,鈥� 鈥渕isplaced鈥� or 鈥渁bandoned.鈥� At ten years old, it鈥檚 not really from antiquity. It may not even fit the legal definition of a treasure.

鈥淭he question here is whether it鈥檚 even a treasure trove,鈥� said Ben Costello, an attorney and board member of the 1715 Fleet Society, which researches and documents the recovery of shipwrecks. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think it is, because the owner is known.鈥�

Property where the owner is known is supposed to go back to that original owner. We don鈥檛 have laws for gold and jewels that the owner doesn鈥檛 want back. It鈥檚 just not a situation that comes up.

But maybe Fenn thought of all this ahead of time? He won鈥檛 say.

鈥淚 would have to make the assumption that it could be legally claimed by someone,鈥� said David McCarthy, a numismatist听who handled the discovery and sale of a $10 million dollar treasure called the Saddle Ridge Hoard, in 2013. 鈥淭here are public lands where citizens of the United States can keep what they find.鈥�

Assuming someone does have a legal claim to their find, the second hurdle is the tax situation, and it is daunting.

鈥淚 saw the announcement that someone found 贵别苍苍鈥檚 million-dollar treasure and I thought 鈥楧o they know they鈥檙e about to pay $450,000 or so in income taxes?鈥� says Larry Brant, a tax attorney in Portland, Oregon.

No one is sure just how much the contents of 贵别苍苍鈥檚 chest is worth, but Brant says the IRS views treasure just like any other income. The moment you find it, you owe taxes on it for that year, regardless of whether you auction it off, give it to someone, or keep it in your living room as a conversation piece.听

Then there鈥檚 the matter of state and local taxes. Just like the winner of a state lottery who has to pay taxes in that state, or an NBA player who has to file income taxes everywhere they play, treasure finders have to pay taxes wherever they find treasure. So if it was in New Mexico, that鈥檚 an extra 4.9 percent听off the top. Wyoming, however, takes nothing. Location matters.听

So, let鈥檚 say the treasure is worth a million dollars, which is what Fenn originally said it might be worth. The finder owes about half of it in taxes, and let鈥檚 say half of what鈥檚 left goes to the lawyers he鈥檒l need to sort out his claim to the property. Then there鈥檚 the Chicago woman who against both Fenn and the anonymous finder claiming he鈥檇 stolen her solve. It all adds up to an income-to-headache ratio that doesn鈥檛 look so good.听

Which brings us to the most interesting, and hopeful, reason for the finder to stay anonymous and obscure the location of the find. It came from听Neitzel, who has been running devoted to the Fenn Treasure for over nine years. His initial reaction was denial when he got the message announcing the find鈥攈e thought someone was spoofing 贵别苍苍鈥檚 email. But now he says he鈥檚 come to terms with it.听

鈥淢y main concern is that Forrest puts closure on this,鈥� he said. 鈥淧eople need to know if they were close.鈥�

He says over the years, one of the ideas that people on his blog keep circling back to is the idea that if they found 贵别苍苍鈥檚 treasure, they would take a little something out for themselves, keep it quiet, then put it back where they found it, without ever disclosing the location. It鈥檚 an option that would save everyone a bunch of taxes, legal fees, and hassle. Wouldn鈥檛 it be great, Neitzel said, if the hunt were over, but the game could go on?

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Five minutes into the first episode of Netflix鈥檚 viral documentary series , its codirector, Eric Goode, encounters a newly purchased snow leopard in the back of a van, suffering in the Florida heat. 鈥淭hat set me on this journey to really understand what is going on with people keeping big cats in this country,鈥� Goode says in the series鈥� only narration. It鈥檚 a moment of feline sympathy that launches the show and sends Goode on a five-year quest to document Big Tiger鈥攁 cat-sprayed听industry of breeders, traffickers, and wealthy narcissists exhibiting wild animals across the United States. The bigger the ego, the bigger the cat.听

Goode, a somewhat well-known conservationist and entrepreneur, should be a natural fit for this series: he听founded the听, an听environmental nonprofit,听in addition to creating听and designing听several nightclubs and hotels, including the Bowery Hotel in New York City. Unfortunately, Goode brings to Tiger King the intellectual rigor and social responsibility of… a nightclub and hotel developer. Don鈥檛 get me wrong, Tiger King is as fun as shootin鈥櫶齯p a stop sign. But the scene with the leopard in the van is the only indication in the five-hour series that anyone behind the camera gives half a litter box听about wildlife. Instead, it selectively leaves out information to听craft听a听narrative that entertains at the expense of both the cats and the actual earthbound truth.

I鈥檓 not a big-cat听person. My familiarity with this world comes from the several months I spent last year听producing and editing 听with reporter Rachel Nuwer. In the series, we explore and try to explain America鈥檚 tiger problem, including two episodes听that cover听much of the same ground as Tiger King. And while听Cat People is a work of journalism听that goes in a very different direction with the material听than the听quarantine-fueled supernova of mass entertainment that is听Tiger King,听the docuseries听skims over or entirely leaves out听the context viewers need to understand anything tiger related.听

Tiger King听looks at three organizations, each with its own charismatic figurehead. Joe 鈥淓xotic鈥� Maldonado-Passage runs the in Oklahoma,听Bhagavan 鈥淒oc鈥� Antle founded (TIGER) in South Carolina, and听Carole Baskin operates in Florida. Tiger King would have you believe that听all three facilities and their owners are versions of听the same thing鈥攅gomaniacs who get off on owning wild animals and then selling that feeling of power and primal connection to the public. The show presents Joe Exotic as honest in his dishonesty, Doc Antle as a con man maintaining plausible deniability, and Carole Baskin as a hypocrite, having fooled her followers (and maybe herself) into believing that she鈥檚 somehow different than the other two. It glosses over the fact that her facility is, in most ways,听fundamentally different.

You know why there are more tigers in captivity than in the wild? Because the general public will pay huge amounts of money to play with a tiny tiger cub for a few minutes. But tigers only stay tiny for a few weeks, so to maintain their supply, breeders like Joe Exotic and Doc Antle, as the series shows, churn out cubs for their petting operations听and then unload them听when the felines听grow up, start chomping on customers, and develop a $10,000-a-year meat habit.

What Tiger King largely听brushes aside is that Big Cat Rescue, on the other hand, only accepts animals confiscated by law enforcement听or from owners who are trying to get rid of them.听The听series quickly skims over听the fact听that these cats are almost always adults and that the听sanctuary forbids petting鈥攊f a staff member or volunteer touches an animal for any reason, they鈥檙e fired and never allowed to return. Finally, Big Cat Rescue听will only take animals if the owners sign a contract declaring听that they鈥檒l never own, or even have a photo taken, with another big cat. If they violate the contract, there are financial penalties. The docuseries doesn鈥檛 mention听this听at all.

The Baskins aren鈥檛 just rescuing big cats, they鈥檙e also working on the problem at its source. The biggest threat to tigers鈥� survival around the world is habitat loss and poaching. When American diplomats try to push other countries to address their high levels of poaching, however, they鈥檙e basically laughed at and told to clean up their own problem first. The Baskins are trying to do exactly听that. making听it illegal for owners and breeders to sell big cats as pets across state lines. Then, in 2016, they were part of a collection of environmental groups to close a loophole that allowed licensees like Joe Exotic and Doc Antle to sell big cats to each other. The Baskins鈥� latest lobbying effort is a bipartisan piece of legislation called , which Tiger King听briefly mentions before going back to more salacious material. It would ban all cub petting and exotic-animal encounters, including for hybrids like ligers and tiligers,听effectively shutting down the mechanism that drives the tiger industry.听

Instead of making听this basic difference clear, the series paints Carole as greedy and manipulative, and it portrays her followers and contributors as having been suckered. Yes, she is uncomfortably cat obsessed. Yes, her organization鈥檚 music videos are pretty cringey. And it鈥檚 true that no one knows what happened to her second husband, Don Lewis, which Tiger King revels in for a whole episode. But it鈥檚 also true听that all the fact-checked pieces of journalism about Carole Baskin ( ) end there鈥攏o one knows. Tiger King, on the other hand, gives a megaphone to the conjecture that Carole killed her husband and fed him to the tigers. The backlash to that conjecture? It defames her, of course, but it also limits her and her husband鈥檚听ability to do big-picture conservation work. It hurts the cats.

Let鈥檚 jump back to the breeders for a second, though, because that鈥檚 where Tiger King really drops the ball. The show gives voice to the idea that breeders are helping wildlife by increasing their numbers. 鈥淲e鈥檙e makin鈥櫶齧ore of 鈥檈m,鈥� Joe says. This is one of the most common arguments you hear from tiger owners and breeders. It鈥檚 also听intellectually dishonest, and the fact the series does not give anyone a chance to correct it in the documentary is irresponsible. Virtually all privately owned tigers in the U.S. are mutts who do not belong to any of the six distinct subspecies found in the wild听 to conservation efforts. The show lets Joe and others suggest that if it looks like a tiger, it must be a tiger, never bothering听to point out that that鈥檚 not actually the case. Tony the Tiger would do better in the wild. At least he wouldn鈥檛 muddy wild genes.

These choices add up to a show that becomes propaganda for its own binge-worthy thesis: the whole industry is petty and shallow, to the point that none of these people who have devoted their lives to big cats actually care about animals. It鈥檚 good TV.听It鈥檚 just not true.听

Goode has stopped doing interviews about Tiger King, but he expressed some regret to 听last month that the series wasn鈥檛 more focused on the animals. 鈥淣etflix is very adept at making binge-worthy television,鈥� he said.听Tiger King was supposed to be Blackfish听for cats. Goode told his subjects he was making a film focused on environmental problems. He ended up with something that may actually be a step backward for tiger conservation in the United States.

The post ‘Tiger King’ Is a Wild Ride. And Largely Misleading. appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

The climb was scheduled to begin at dawn, but at dawn there was nothing to climb, just a tiny hump of land on the horizon. We were still miles away, chugging along on the northwestern Pacific Ocean. Over the next few hours the hump grew larger, transforming into the cone of a volcano. From the boat I could see cliffs, a lava-rock seashore, and dense jungle rising to grassy ridgelines that crept upward like veins to a heart. Dark clouds obscured the summit. It looked like a place that could swallow you whole.

Our group consists of 11 American climbers, one Brit, and six porters from the nearest population center, Saipan, 248 miles to the south. Saipan is part of a little-known U.S. territory called the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, and the top of the volcanic island we鈥檙e approaching鈥攃alled Agrihan鈥斅環appens to be the territory鈥檚 highest point. At just over 3,000 feet, it鈥檚 nothing special as mountains go. But as far as anyone knows, it has never been climbed. Fifteen years ago our expedition leader, John Mitchler, decided that he wanted to be the first. Since then, no one has been able to talk him out of it.

At 9:04 a.m., the crew of our 60-foot boat, the Super Emerald, dropped anchor and winched a small skiff over the deck. Loading it up, they implored us to not fall overboard because 鈥渢he sharks here are not friendly.鈥�

We filled the skiff with duffel bags of climbing gear and gallon after gallon of water. We brought a ton of it鈥�250 gallons in all, weighing precisely 2,082.5 pounds. Roughly a gallon per person per day for the nearly two weeks we鈥檇 be here. It would take five trips from boat to shore to off-load all of it, and then the Super Emerald would turn back for Saipan. Over the next week, we would haul those jugs up to each of four camps en route to the top, returning to the beach every night to fetch more.

Looking toward the shore, I could see John and the crew tossing jugs toward the sand like a fire brigade. Then, in a blink, they were done, and John disappeared into the jungle, heading uphill, already sniffing out a route to the top.

To complete a first ascent is to be written into history, but unclimbed mountains are a dwindling resource. The Alps were once so formidable that, as recently as 1723, a respected scientist published an account of the various species of dragon to be found there. Dragons proved absent, however, and alpinists decided they liked climbing anyway, and began tagging summits all over the world. They checked them off at a furious pace, and climbing firsts are mostly now about new routes or new styles or some other minute or oddball differentiation鈥斅瓂oungest, oldest, fastest, first without oxygen, first cancer survivor, first blind person, .

John is trying to carve out his own little niche in that world, but he鈥檚 doing it by chasing quantity, not quality. Some climbers pejoratively call this peak bagging鈥斅璼ummiting mountains just to say that you summited them, regardless of how difficult they are. Defenders claim that the beauty isn鈥檛 in pioneering a new route but in the completion of a list鈥攍ike the Seven Summits, the highest point on each continent.

John belongs to an even more curious subset of peak baggers called high pointers. High pointers don鈥檛 limit themselves to mountains. They鈥檒l go to the top of anything so long as it isn鈥檛 man-made. You might say that there鈥檚 no climb too small. Mighty Denali in Alaska or modest are equal checkboxes on the list. High pointers tend to be engineers, scientists, programmers鈥攆ans of empirical data with a passion for details. Many joke about their single-minded focus on summits, calling it 鈥渢he sickness.鈥� When they say that about John, they aren鈥檛 really joking.

John lives in Golden, Colorado. He鈥檚 62 but looks younger, with a square jaw and long hair always pulled back into the kind of man bun that tends to belie his conservative politics. A geologist by training, he now spends most of his time running several small businesses鈥攁 marketing firm, an adventure travel agency, and a spice company called JAK Seasoning among them鈥攖hat he owns with his wife, Kathy.

In the 1980s, John began spending much of his spare time and money reaching the highest point in all 50 U.S. states鈥攚hich, he says, 鈥渕ost high pointers agree is the coolest list.鈥� Some of those summits, like Alaska鈥檚 20,310-foot Denali, are truly arduous, dangerous climbs. Others, such as Delaware鈥檚 447.85-foot Ebright Azimuth, are mere hills.

By John鈥檚 reckoning, more people have climbed the Seven Summits (416) than the 50 high points (305). When he finished in 2003, he marked the occasion by setting another goal: he鈥檇 climb the high points in all five inhabited U.S. territories, which no one had ever done. 鈥淚 do love checking off a list,鈥� he says.

He got to it. Guam and Puerto Rico were practically drive-ups. The U.S. Virgin Islands and American Samoa: no problem. By the summer of 2014, all that was left was Agrihan.

Perhaps Agrihan has never been climbed because it鈥檚 so remote, or because there鈥檚 no reliable source of fresh water, or because it鈥檚 brutally hot and humid. Most likely it just never occurred to anyone that it would be worth doing.

鈥淔or most climbers, it鈥檚 either Everest听or bouldering or Alex Honnold and all that,鈥� John says. 鈥淭his is really bizarre climbing.鈥� That was basically his sales pitch the first time we spoke on the phone. I鈥檓 not a high pointer. I don鈥檛 even like climbing all that much. When the mountains are calling, I generally pretend I have bad service and __n鈥檛 hear wh__ they鈥檙e say__. In 2016, I climbed to 20,000 feet in Bolivia, but I was searching for the remnants of a plane crash, and I didn鈥檛 bother to summit. Since then, my standard line has been that if I鈥檓 going to climb a mountain, there had better be a plane crash up there.

Agrihan, I was told, would be different. We鈥檇 be on a tropical island, not a frigid mountain, and we wouldn鈥檛 be covering much ground. Our route would be just three miles long, with 3,000 feet of vertical gain. There wouldn鈥檛 be any altitude issues, and the route wouldn鈥檛 be technical, just a muddy stretch near the top where we might place ropes. The hard part would be the glacially slow process of building trails through heavy jungle and aptly named sword grass. We鈥檇 establish base camp on the beach and a series of four higher camps for stashing water and supplies en route to the summit. At first we鈥檇 shuttle two or three gallons at a time to camps one and two. Then, as the porters set up the higher camps, we鈥檇 haul roughly half of that to camps three and four. If we could get a couple dozen gallons to camp four鈥攁bout two gallons per person鈥攖hat would be enough for everyone to summit. It would be hot, wet, and extremely slow going, with lots of grunt work and little fanfare if we succeeded. But in 1953, a plane had gone down somewhere in the crater. So I guess I was in.

Our base camp is a semi-abandoned six-room building left over from when Agrihan was used as a coconut plantation and is currently losing a decades-long endurance contest with the heat and humidity. Ever since the Spanish came ashore in 1565, the island has been intermittently inhabited and abandoned, following the whims of whichever superpower controlled it鈥擲pain, Germany, Japan, and currently the U.S. Last abandoned in 2010, its population when we arrive is exactly two: Eddie Saures and Jeremy Topulei, who grew up in Saipan and came to Agrihan last year to prepare the island for resettlement. They spend their days fixing up the place and taming the jungle around the scattered buildings. Survival depends on their vegetable garden, collecting rainwater, jungle fruit, the fish they catch, and the pigs they hunt, along with 50-pound bags of rice and a 30-pack of Bud Light delivered quarterly.

I spend the first full day shadowing John as he picks his way up toward the mountain. By nightfall our trail is still a modest thing. Snaking through the shaded jungle for an easy 20 minutes, curving around felled palm trees and startled lizards, it rises only slightly before leaving the shade and hitting eight-foot-tall sword grass. From this point on, our machete-wielding porters whack a shoulder-wide path straight up the fall line toward the ridgetop. The sword grass is thick and nasty stuff, like a cross between bamboo and corn. Its serrated blades slice any exposed skin; when cut to ankle height, the stalks stand straight up like punji sticks. In the grass, there鈥檚 no protection from the sun, and the air is 87 degrees with 80 percent humidity. The sheer thickness of the growth stifles airflow, and hiking up the ridge is like breathing into a paper bag inside a sauna.

It鈥檚 not just the heat and the foliage; there are also flies everywhere. Millions of them swarm our eyes, noses, mouths. At one point a fly lodges itself in my left ear, seemingly stuck until, 40 minutes later, I finally hook it with my finger and it breaks in half. Then the other flies seem to sense his demise and redouble their efforts to get in my ear and harvest the smooshed bits of their comrade.

The first two times John tried to climb Agrihan, he wore a head net and covered up to try and combat the insects. Now he just lets them swarm.

That鈥檚 right. My apologies. I haven鈥檛 mentioned the first two climbs.

In 2014, John chartered the Super Emerald for four days with a high pointer named Roger Kaul and his nephew, Clint, who is on this trip, too. That group, along with three porters, braved the heat, humidity, and flies as long as they could but made it only halfway up the mountain before the boat had to return to Saipan. 鈥淭hat was pathetic,鈥� John says. 鈥淛ust embarrassing.鈥�

In 2015, they doubled the size of the expedition: six climbers, five porters, and a documentarian. They hacked their way to within 26 vertical feet of the top and identified what they thought was the summit鈥攁 vertical column on the volcano鈥檚 rim. But they were separated from it by a deep mud valley that was too dangerous to traverse without climbing gear, which they hadn鈥檛 brought. So they turned back.

This is where the shape of John鈥檚 obsession really becomes clear. Because whatever wilderness experience or trial-by-flies John wanted to have on this island, he鈥檚 had it. Twice. But he hasn鈥檛 touched the summit, so he鈥檚 back. There鈥檚 a tinge of desperation in his efforts. John鈥檚 not so much an explorer or a pioneer as an eccentric collector lusting after the final piece of a set. That鈥檚 no metaphor. He collects almost everything. Stamps, gum wrappers, coins, beer cans, water bottles, magazines, and yes, mountains. In fact, given that he鈥檚 afraid of heights, sometimes the collecting is at odds with the mountaineering. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 seek out rock climbing or ice climbing,鈥� he says. 鈥淏ut if it鈥檚 there, I鈥檒l do it.鈥�

His real talent, he says, is data analysis. He鈥檚 very good at obsessing. To save weight, he doesn鈥檛 carry a stove or fuel and eats his food cold. He also keeps a list of the most 颅effective cost-per-calorie energy bars. (Winner: Snickers.)

Whatever his methods, it鈥檚 hard to argue with the results. John has high-pointed not just all 50 states but 55 of the 60 national parks as well. He also wrote a county-by-county guidebook of Colorado鈥檚 high points. Though he recently stepped down from the job, for the past 20 years, he鈥檚 written and 颅edited the glossy newsletter of the ,听which makes him something like the figurehead of this tribe. He knows that he could claim Agrihan if he wanted to, even without actually topping out on it. The high-pointing community doesn鈥檛 have strict criteria for what constitutes a summit鈥擩ohn says you should get your head above the highest point鈥攂ut there鈥檚 no verification system. If you say you climbed it, you climbed it.

One climber on the 2015 trip did, in fact, quietly check the mountain off his list. John did not. The fact that he hadn鈥檛 attained the true summit ate at him. He decided that he would not cut his hair until he reached the top of Agrihan. (Hence the New Age man bun.) He put Kathy in charge of chartering the boat, booking hotels, and other logistics, because you can鈥檛 effectively negotiate on price when you want something this badly.

鈥淒on鈥檛 get me wrong, I want them to succeed,鈥� Kathy told me before the trip. 鈥淏ut you can鈥檛 hear it in my voice.鈥�

It was sir Hugh Munro, a Scotsman, who first popularized the idea of climbing a list. Back in 1873, Munro started summiting all of Scotland鈥檚 peaks over 3,000 feet鈥攏ow called the Munros鈥攁nd began cataloging them. In 1936, Arthur Marshall became the first to high-point all 48 (at the time) U.S. states. Vin Hoeman was the first to do all 50, in 1966. By high-pointing the U.S. territories, John is trying to join their ranks. But on the third day of our expedition, that desire to make history left him wrung out and recuperating at camp two.

Clint Kaul brought the news. A retired software engineer from Kalamazoo, Michigan, Clint returned to base camp on the beach that night and relayed that John was too tired to come back down. He had climbed the first ridge in full sun and overheated. He would stay where he was and rest.

鈥淐an someone bring up my MP3 player tomorrow?鈥� John asks when we reach him on the radio.

鈥淵eah, we鈥檒l send it up with the masseuse,鈥� jokes Greg Juhl, a 45-year-old ER doctor from Reno, Nevada.

Back on the beach, though, there鈥檚 some confusion as to when John tired out. He is almost always the most enthusiastic high pointer in the room. But as we prepared for this trip, he鈥檇 looked haggard and exhausted. Purchasing supplies at an Ace Hardware in Saipan, he even seemed a little irritated. 鈥淟et鈥檚 just get to the summit and get out of there,鈥� he鈥檇 said as the group debated the merits of different gear.

Over the next two days, we continue hauling water. John stays higher up on the mountain with his MP3 player, moving gear between camps two and three and preparing to set up camp four. Many of us start the day at 4:30 A.M., hoping to carry two 40-pound backpacks full of water and supplies before the sun hits. By the morning of the fifth day, a lot of us are moving slowly and snapping at each other over little stuff. I鈥檝e tweaked my back. Clint, who accompanied John on the other two summit attempts and helped with much of the route planning for this trip, has developed a deep cough that asserts itself each morning. 鈥淚 really hate this mountain,鈥� he says before heading uphill.

I grab two gallons from camp one and pick up a third and fourth from camp two. Once above the sword grass鈥攋ust before camp three, at 1,950 feet鈥攖he flora turns to waist-high ferns. From there it鈥檚 an hour straight up to 2,520-foot camp four. When I get to camp three around lunchtime, Gary Reckelhoff is sitting there with a daypack. Thirty years old and built like a greyhound that does CrossFit, Gary always wears a heart-rate monitor听and tracks how many calories he鈥檚 burning on an expedition. He鈥檚 the most physically fit member of the team, but you wouldn鈥檛 know it from the tiny load he just carried from camp two. I start to simmer with anger. And that鈥檚 before I head up to the breezier, permanently cloudy camp four, where I find John and a 51-year-old entrepreneur and nonstop talker named Tony Cobb.

During the previous two days, there was grumbling at base camp about these two. Is John still recovering? No one knows. What鈥檚 Tony doing up there?

For the past hour, I鈥檇 been rehearsing a lecture along the lines of: Are you sure you should even be here, John? But when I arrive, John comes over and tells me he鈥檚 not doing so great. He has no legs, no strength.

鈥淚 think I鈥檓 done,鈥� he says.

Done for the day?

鈥淒one with high pointing,鈥� he says. 鈥淭his is my last expedition.鈥�

You can鈥檛 harangue someone who鈥檚 on the verge of giving up. John鈥檚 struggle has placed him firmly atop the moral high ground. But I鈥檓 still angry, so I move on to Tony, who is stretched out on his sleeping pad in his skivvies, a contented smile on his face. When I see this, my anger boils over. There are nine gallons of water here when there should be two dozen. I ask how he can just sit here while the rest of the group toils in the heat? Granted, Tony hauled some water on his way up, and he鈥檚 been moving gear between camps and setting up rain catchments. But it鈥檚 not raining, and the longer he and John stay high on the mountain, the more water the rest of us have to carry. My voice quavers, I鈥檓 so furious.

鈥淵eah, well, I鈥檝e been needing an excuse to go back down,鈥� Tony says when I鈥檓 done.

鈥淚鈥檒l give you an excuse,鈥� I yell. 鈥淣ine fucking gallons!鈥�

For the first time on the trip, Tony barely says a word in response. He simply gets up, packs his gear, and heads down the mountain.

I walk away to be alone for a bit. Everything feels backward. Tony is quiet. Obsessive John is quitting high pointing. I鈥檓 chewing out a team member over a climb I supposedly have no stake in. No one鈥檚 more surprised by my behavior than me.

But I think I know why I鈥檓 so invested. Nine months before Agrihan, I broke my leg in a canyoneering accident and spent 21 hours waiting for a helicopter to get me to a hospital. It was a traumatic fall that shattered both my fibula and my youth. I came out of surgery in a 32-year-old鈥檚 midlife crisis鈥攆ragile, anxious, and newly aware of my mortality.

The first time I spoke with John on the phone, he persuaded me to join the trip. But I think I needed to be on this climb more than he needed me on it. Like a lot of high pointers trying to summit Denali before they get too old听to do all 50 states, I was climbing to prove that I was still capable of a kooky expedition in the middle of nowhere鈥攖hat I was still myself.

So I guess John and I both need to conquer some dragons on this mountain. From camp four, it seems like the only place we鈥檒l find them is at the mountain鈥檚 very highest point.

By day six, we鈥檙e within striking distance of the summit, except that we don鈥檛 know which summit to strike. Radar topography shows two potential high points, both situated along the rim of the crater, at 952 and 960 meters (3,123 and 3,150 feet, respectively). They鈥檙e dubbed P952 and P960. The two elevations are within the radar鈥檚 margin of error, however, so there鈥檚 no way to tell which is the true summit.

Normally, determining which point is higher would be a simple matter of setting up a spotting scope on one of them and shooting it toward the other. But the cloud cover makes this next to impossible.

鈥淪ome places have two or more high points that are exactly the same,鈥� John says. 鈥淭he purists go to both.鈥�

Ginge Fullen is a purist. An Englishman who lives in Scotland and a former clearance diver who disarmed underwater bombs for a living, Ginge has a Mr. Clean look and is easily the most accomplished high pointer in the group, perhaps of all time. He has high-pointed 170 of the world鈥檚 195 countries, though in 1996 he tried to summit Mount Everest and suffered an altitude-induced heart attack. (His injury gets a brief mention in Into Thin Air.) Doctors advised against further mountain climbing. Rather than hang up his boots, Ginge simply capped his climbs at 6,000 meters鈥攁bout 20,000 feet. While that rules out Everest and 16 other country high points he hasn鈥檛 climbed, he can sure as hell climb Agrihan.

Ginge, Gary, and I spend hours setting ropes between the two summits, which are connected by a 200-yard-long ridge made treacherous by a thousand-foot drop that goes straight into the crater. The traverse involves picking our way through the shrubs and trees that crowd the ridge, descending into a small valley, and then ascending a 15-foot mud wall.

The ridge is precarious鈥攁t one point while we鈥檙e pounding in anchor stakes, a three-foot chunk of mud peels off and falls away. We鈥檙e at least five days from a hospital, and if someone were to go over the edge, Ginge says, they鈥檇 be better off not surviving. John is wary of heights, making this particular scenario his nightmare. He doesn鈥檛 want to do the ridge traverse. The question is: Will he be able to sleep at night if he doesn鈥檛 touch both summits?

The next day, after the ropes are set, all 12 climbers make their way up to P960 and pose for a photo. Then, at their own pace, most everyone crosses the ridge to P952, just to be sure, and returns. But not John. Instead, he gives a little speech about how he woke up this morning feeling like he just didn鈥檛 need the second summit.

鈥淪ometimes you need a mountain,鈥� he says. 鈥淚 woke up and I didn鈥檛 need this one.鈥�

On the way down, I ask another climber, Reid Larson, what to make of John鈥檚 decision. Reid is something of a high-pointing wunderkind. Just 32 years old, he鈥檚 been blitzing through lists and is now tied with John as the first person to summit all 50 states plus all five U.S. territories, assuming that P960 is the true summit. But if the other peak, P952, turns out to be higher, Reid, who touched both, will be the only one between them to have summited Agrihan. If this is John鈥檚 last expedition, why not be sure he鈥檇 really finished?

鈥淏ased on everything he鈥檚 done, it鈥檚 not really about risk aversion,鈥� Reid says, referring to the ridge traverse. 鈥淲e鈥檙e all sort of flummoxed.鈥�

Of course, we don鈥檛 actually know that the second summit is higher. As near as we can tell, it鈥檚 somewhere between 18 inches and three feet taller than P960. But it鈥檚 awfully close. John may have already done the thing we鈥檙e worried he鈥檒l regret not doing. But we may never get an accurate measurement.

Except that while the rest of us make our way down from the top, Gary Reckelhoff stays behind. We have another four days before the boat comes. He鈥檚 going to stay near the spotting scope and wait for the weather to clear, because 鈥渢here can only be one highest point,鈥� he says. Two days later the clouds part, and Gary reports that the second peak is seven feet taller than the one John went up. So it鈥檚 confirmed: John didn鈥檛 stand on the highest point.

Over the next two days, the team tries to convince John to go back up the mountain and touch the true summit. The trail isn鈥檛 that bad. Gary can get up there in four hours. John could do it in a day. We鈥檇 carry his gear!

Except that on the way down from the summit, ten minutes from base camp, Ginge slipped and landed on his machete, severing a tendon in his finger. Greg, the ER doc, sewed him up, but Ginge will need surgery and is done climbing for now. We鈥檙e trying to convince John to take on a death-mud traverse without the strongest climber on our team.

Or maybe it has nothing to do with Ginge. At one point or another, each of us is going to wake up to find that we can鈥檛 do the things we used to be able to do, or that those things don鈥檛 matter as much as they once did. For John, that day just happened to come when he was supposed to summit the last mountain on his list.

鈥淚 was making a statement to myself,鈥� he told me later, recalling his decision not to go up again. 鈥淚 need to stop the obsession.鈥�

For the past 20 years, John has been the fixated-on-summits guy. It has colored every relationship, every interaction. People want to know: What鈥檚 next?

鈥淚 climbed Denali, and then everyone said, 鈥楢re you going to do Everest?鈥� 鈥� John says. 鈥淲here does it stop? And how do you stop it?鈥�

Maybe by pulling up just short of the true summit, and counting it anyway. John did 99.78 percent of Agrihan. Maybe it鈥檚 time to start rounding up. We swat flies and play backgammon for three days until the Super Emerald shows up to take us home. Agrihan recedes into the distance, and John raises his middle finger, flipping off the mountain, his youth, his desire to make history.

The only way to slay some dragons is to simply stop believing in them.

Contributing editor Peter Frick-Wright () is the host of the 国产吃瓜黑料 podcast.

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It takes some of the most extreme situations to test our desperate desire to live.

How a 13-Year-Old Saved His Dad鈥檚 Life

Charlie Finlayson was on the ultimate climbing adventure with his dad, David, when a loose boulder forced him to make a daunting rescue.听

Adrift at Sea

With no shore in sight, the only thing Matthew Bryce had to cling to was his surfboard and the hope that someone would find him.听

Way Off-Piste

It only took one wrong turn for Kelsey Malin and her ski partner to find themselves 52 hours deep into the backcountry with no food, water, or way to get out.

A High Case of the Bends

George Watson and Geoff Belter went diving in Peru. One of them was never found again.听

Sink or Swim

When two young pilots flew out over the Pacific together to log hours, they didn't plan on having to make a crash landing.听

How One Couple Survived the Tubbs Fire

Imagine opening your door to a fire. Now imagine there鈥檚 no way out.听

The post Shocking Stories of Survival appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

The first I heard of , outside Portland, Oregon, was on the radio in my car. A climber had fallen 700 feet and six others were stranded.

This was yesterday afternoon, February 13, and when I got home a few minutes later, I found that local news helicopters were on scene and streaming their footage on Facebook live. My girlfriend, Ellie, already had it pulled up on the Chromecast, and was on . Six climbers were trapped by bad ice that was in places so thick and hard that they couldn鈥檛 get any purchase with their crampons and axes. Elsewhere听it was so crumbly, and the pieces being dislodged so big, that some compared it to a bowling alley. One听climber听had fallen and would be pronounced dead at the hospital. I sat down and we toggled between live footage of the rescue and hours-old tape of three fellow climbers giving CPR for 90 minutes.

It was horrifying.

Last August, I broke my leg in a canyon and spent 21 hours being rescued from the flanks of the same mountain, by a lot of the same people. I was finally pulled to safety by probably the same Black Hawk helicopter. At one point, while watching yesterday鈥檚 feed, I saw a rescuer taking photos and said out loud, 鈥淟ook, there鈥檚 Tim, snapping pics just like he did on my rescue!鈥�

As I and many others watched, I was grateful that I was rescued on a Sunday morning, when there weren鈥檛 any news choppers in the air. Technology has made it so that Mount Hood rescue efforts are to Portland what police pursuits are to Los Angeles. In 2002, on live TV, shifting gusts of wind helicopter (essentially an upgraded Black Hawk) while it was hovering over a rescue team evacuating an injured climber from Hogsback Ridge鈥攖he same part of Mount Hood where yesterday鈥檚 accident took place. Incredibly, no one was killed in the crash.

In December 2006, on up the more difficult north side of the mountain, climbers Kelly James, Brian Hall, and Jerry 鈥淣ikko鈥� Cooke were caught out in a storm. As Hall and Cooke went for help, James stayed behind in a snow cave. He captured the world鈥檚 attention when he was able to make a cell phone call to his wife. Rescuers got to his body a week later. Hall and Cooke were never found.

A few months later, in February 2007, a group of eight climbers had three of their party and a dog go over a cliff near Palmer Glacier in white out conditions. They spent the night in a makeshift shelter, in contact with rescuers by cell phone, with news vans camped out in the parking lot. The eager public held its breath. Both groups .

The rescues on Mount Hood haven鈥檛 stopped, and the coverage of each one gets a little more immediate. But as footage of yesterday鈥檚 accident streamed onto our TV, Ellie and I watched as the people being rescued were subjected to a knee-jerk public shaming. Even before they were off the mountain, even after one of their group had died, the questions popped onto the screen below the Facebook stream: How dare they take risks? What did they expect? Who do they think they are?

鈥淚t鈥檚 a lot of extra pressure,鈥� Robert Aberle told me when I asked him about performing rescues on live TV. Aberle was the paramedic who responded to my accident in August. The helicopter crash in 2002 was his first mission as a medic on the Reach and Treat team, and he was involved with every rescue described above and many more. 鈥淚t almost seems like [the media] want you to screw up because that creates better news. It gets more coverage,鈥� he said.

I鈥檓 a part of the media, but after my rescue, I see that coverage differently, too. The experience of being pulled off a mountain by professional rescuers is deeply humbling, and my 21-hour ordeal is the most vulnerable I have ever felt. I had nightmares for months. I often wept at nothing and disappeared mentally back into the moment of my injury. But my accident was minor by comparison鈥攏o one died and my life was never in immediate danger. I was spared the judgment of strangers.

We only have vague information about what happened on the mountain yesterday. We only just learned that the man that died was named Miha Sumi, and that he was from Portland. We鈥檒l never know how he would have felt about his death being live-streamed on the internet. At one point on the video, his friends did chest compressions and waved a space blanket as if signaling for help, but the rescue helicopters come from farther away than the news helicopters, so the only aircraft on scene was loaded with cameras, sending pictures to me on my couch鈥攊t felt just as disrespectful to watch as it did to look away.

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At this point, Zac Efron鈥檚 life seems almost completely public: he鈥檚 got a tabloid love life, he鈥檚 not shy about removing his shirt, and he鈥檚 fairly open about having been to rehab. But when recruited him and his younger brother, Dylan鈥攚ho is an Ironman triathlete and dedicated fly-fisherman鈥攖o test out products this summer for a new ad campaign, the world learned that Zac is actually pretty comfortable running around in wild places. Growing up in Central California, the brothers frequently went out in search of waterfalls, cliff jumps, and other adventures.听
听
This summer, Columbia sent the Efrons to as part of their , and the guys filmed each other all the way to the top of the Continental Divide Trail. Earlier today, a few hours after Columbia posted a video from the trip, we caught up with Zac by phone in LA to ask about his secret outdoor adventure habit, keeping up with his younger brother, and their awesome, newly-customized Sprinter van.

OUTSIDE: Tell me about this van that you and your brother have.
ZAC EFRON: It's a dream come true. You know, a lot of kids play around with different kinds of cars, and everybody wanted听the Batmobile or some cool NASCAR car. I wanted a van. And that's all I wanted鈥攍ike a mobile home I could park anywhere in the bushes and just be, like, a creep with a van. Well, not be a creep but, like, a surfer.听

You mean like a Chris Farley kind of van?
[Laughs] Yes. And I think it started because my grandparents used to have one and they lived up north in Oregon. And we would take a lot of family trips together in our Westfalia. And there was a stove in that one. It was an awesome thing.

So what are you in now?听
This one's been upgraded. We got it rock-a-fied.听

Rock like rockstar?听
No, like The Rock. Like just buffed up. Like super van. We call it The Wolf because it's covered in not just paint but Rhino Lining. It's matte, it's cool. There's a lot of room in it. It's super fun to drive. It's got big tires. We did more hard core off-roading in this thing than in any truck I've ever driven. All the electronics are solar paneled. It runs on diesel fuel, which is nice and effective and affordable and fun to figure out. My brother picked it up. That was his contribution to the trip. So I had to learn the “van rules.”

Your brother is a pretty accomplished outdoorsman and triathlete. Did he pull you into this stuff as an adult?听
It's always been in our blood. We've done it since we were young. That's the only way we could have fun. We didn't really have amusement parks or anything. We would go to the beach or head inland to a couple of spots where there are hikes to waterfalls or hot springs and that kind of stuff. It's kind of a gem, where we grew up. We found the most epic cliff jumps the other day. It was beautiful.听

What's your brotherly dynamic like on the trail?听
It depends. I mean, if it's really just us out there and we're just hiking or backpacking it's a lot different than doing it with a camera crew. I'll tell you that much. I'm a little bit more camera savvy so I know what is important or what might need to be done more. So I kind of have a slightly different perspective on it.听

Does one of you push the pace while the other stops to smell the flowers?
I mean, it's me keeping up with him. That鈥檚 what it is usually. But it's fun because he pushes the limits and so do I in other ways. I'll be the first one to test the water and see if it's deep enough on a cliff jump. But he's the one to start a fire or make sure we're staying on course.

Are you looking for adrenaline when you're outside? Or more like peace and solitude?听
Both. You just go back to being real. The city is sucked out of you. You can get in these little bickering fights on the road and they're over in two seconds and that's just the way it is. You have to stick together. You're stuck with one another when you're out on a trip like that. So you work through your issues. We probably learned more about each other in four days on the road than we did in a whole month just chilling at home.听

You've been cast a party guy for the last few years, which lined up with your real life to some extent. Do you think this project with Columbia, and just generally doing more stuff outside, will change perceptions about you and maybe get you different kinds of roles?
Yeah, I hope so. The whole inception of this idea was kind of like, I have had this secret that I've kept for a long time. I can go anywhere and I can just be alone. I know how to do that. I've learned how to camp. But we have a generation of people that don't necessarily know how or haven't seen anybody really do it or know what it means to escape. This was an opportunity to reach out with a solid brand that's using recyclable materials to make awesome jackets that helped my brother and I cross the Continental Divide. If we can show people what these places are and why the world is worth saving, then we're kind of hitting everything I would want to accomplish with a partnership. It's just a call out to our generation to get moving.听

I don鈥檛 have like a cool ending question.
It鈥檚 all good dude.

What's the next outdoor trip you鈥檙e excited about?听
Just probably go to the top of , in LA. [laughs] But the top, top, top鈥攍ike alllll the way to the top. You can look down at Griffith, it's fun. It's beautiful. For me, step one each day is to get outside. After that, it鈥檚 all downhill.

So with the resources to go anywhere in the world, you choose Griffith Park?听
I mean, there's so many places I want to see. You know my brother and I go fly fishing quite a bit. And that's something my dad loves to do and he's pretty good at himself and we can afford those trips now. So it's kind of cool to be able to go. You've got the van so you have zero excuses. Cut out all the bullshit. Let's go fishing. Just be at my house. I've got everything. Let's go. And to be able to be that guy for my family, the one who gets us outside, that's the guy I want to be.听

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