North Cascades: Bastion of the Wild

 

Sitting like stone guardians just below the Canadian border, the North Cascade mountains are keepers of the wildness that once roamed unchecked across North America. Soaring high into the skies, their stony and snowy peaks seem to scrape at the clouds that pass overhead demanding tribute as they float by. Sparkling like scattered gems, glacially fed lakes brilliantly reflect the sunlight while, through deep green valleys, bright, blue-gray rivers run down to the surrounding flatlands. It is a spot where a person could quickly leave behind all of the trappings that attach themselves to our modern daily existence and transport to another existence entirely. Roughly 90 million years ago, the range began to take shape when two continental plates collided. The force caused parts of the North American plate to begin to jut upwards, reaching for the sky. It created volcanos, still active today, that form part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, along with the rest of the Cascade Mountain range. The area is still dominated by huge granite deposits, remnants of mountains that eroded away 5 or 6 million years before now. Read more at : North Cascades

Story by: Hudson Lindenberger

Images By:Jason Hummel & Ben Matthews

India–United Kingdom bus routes

 

Numerous United Kingdom–India bus routes ran from the 1950s to the 1970s. The first of these was "The Indiaman", a service from London to Calcutta that was inaugurated on 15 April 1957. At least 32 other operators ran services, including Albert Travel which ran 15 round journeys from London to India. Overland routes were made difficult by political unrest in the Middle East during the 1970s and ended with the 1979 Iranian Revolution and Soviet–Afghan War. 

The Indiaman in Iran

The first UK–India bus service was "The Indiaman", run by London-based Garrow-Fisher Tours. This left Victoria Coach Station on April 15th 1957 and returned after a 20,000 mile  journey to Calcutta on August 2nd. The journey, which was covered by The New York Times, was eventful with driver Oswald-Joseph Garrow-Fisher recalling the road passing over high cliffs near Mount Ararat at the Turkey-Soviet Union border, soft verges in India, and needing to use planks under the wheels to escape the desert sand in Iran.

On the return leg, the 1957-1958 influenza pandemic forced the closure of the Pakistan-Iran border. The tour diverted from the border to the city of Karachi, intending to find passage on a ship, but upon reaching the port they learned the land border had reopened and so returned that way, a diversion of some 1,200 miles (1,900 km). The British embassy in Tehran had heard a rumour that the passengers had been murdered en route and were so relieved when they arrived unharmed that they hosted a cocktail party in their honour.

The Indiaman was a 1948 AEC Regal III. Garrow-Fisher refurbished the 33-seater bus, which already had already travelled 100,000 miles (160,000 km), for the journey. In its transcontinental configuration, it could carry 24 passengers plus luggage. For the first journey, Garrow-Fisher charged £85 for the outbound fare and £65 for the return; 20 passengers were carried to India and 7 made the return journey. Passengers slept overnight in hotels or camped outside. One passenger, Peter Moss, wrote an book about the journey: The Indiaman – When the Going was Good by Land and Sea. The Indiaman made four return journeys in total.

A bus named "Albert" was run by Albert Travel from May 1968. The venture was started by British travel agent and Australian resident Andy Stewart, who purchased a 1947 Albion Motors CS Venturer double-decker bus from the New South Wales Department of Government Transport; the bus had previously operated the number 2004 service in Sydney. Stewart managed to reduce the asking price from AU$1000 to AU$400 as the bus was not capable of going above 32 miles per hour (51 km/h) and had a large dent in the rear. He fitted it out with bunk beds to suit 14 passengers, extra fuel tanks and drinking water supply. There was also heating in the lower deck, a radio and cassette player, a reading and dining saloon and a kitchen with a gas cooker and sink.

Starting in Australia (the bus transferred by ship to India), Stewart drove 13 passengers on the first trip to London. He made a further 14 round trips between 1968 and 1975, when political instability in Iran forced him to stop. A typical route ran from Victoria Coach Station via Belgium, West Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, West Pakistan to India where it stopped at New Delhi, Agra, Allahabad, Banaras and Calcutta. Until 1970, the bus was shipped from Calcutta to Sydney. Thereafter, the bus ran to Calcutta from which passengers could choose to fly across Burma to Bangkok, Thailand and continue by train through Malaysia to Singapore where a boat would carry them to Perth or Sydney, Australia. The bus stopped en route to allow passengers to visit sites of interest and local shops. In the early years, a one-way ticket was £85; this rose to £125 by the early 1970s excluding catering. The connection via Singapore to Australia was a further £125. The trip was advertised as "the world's longest bus route" and "your complete home while you travel".

Stewart returned to Australia as a travel agent after making the last trip to London. He retired back to the UK and, in 2001, tracked down the Albert bus, which was in Brighton. He purchased the vehicle in 2009 and renovated it to make a return journey overland to Australia. He raised funds by selling shares at £250 each, with the owners of ten or more shares being entitled to a seat on the trip. The journey was completed in 2012 and the bus remains in Australia making appearances at car shows.

In the decade following the inauguration of "The Indiaman", at least 32 operators arranged bus trips between the UK and India. These included the Waltzing Matilda, Topdeck Travel, Swagman Tour's Asian Greyhound, Tentrek Expeditions, King Kong, Crazy Bus, Penn Overland and No Sweat Overland Tours. Vehicles varied from double decker buses to converted fire engines and typically took 20 days each way. Penn Travel had a "Marco Polo Tour" route that ran from London to Kathmandu over 72 days. Some of the companies would also arrange hotels en route and broker visas for their passengers. Eastbound travellers were usually westerners seeking adventure while westbound travellers were often economic migrants from Punjab. Operators claimed cultural differences and difficulties at the border crossings made westbound trips more troublesome and charged an additional £20 for these. At least one driver insisted on being armed for all westbound journeys. The closure of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in 1978 meant some journeys had to be completed by air and the overland routes became completely untenable following the 1979 Iranian Revolution and Soviet–Afghan War.

Todd Cameron and The Canonball

 @Marjorie Kleiman

Todd Cameron raced this 114-Year-Old Motorcycle Cross-Country and won the Class 1. Todd Cameron completed the ‘Cannonball’ going 40 mph and using pedals to climb mountains on his 1909 Indian motorcycle. The competition between Todd Cameron and Dave Currier was fierce, yet friendly. The two Cannonball veterans could often be seen riding the course side by side. And through each stage of the competition, everyone wondered whether Dave would keep the #1 spot or turn over the championship to challenger Todd. It wasn’t easy for either of these men to maintain the top two positions like they did throughout the entire run. Todd had to change both front and rear sprockets on his 1909 Indian Single not only many times throughout the competition, but multiple times in a single day! And Dave’s 1911 Harley-Davidson Single could not be left to idle in traffic or the belt would have burned up. Those who rode near him would see him either ride circles to avoid stopping at lights, or jump off the bike and roll it back and forth until the light changed or traffic cleared enough that he could jump back on and take off again. Once the endurance run reached its conclusion, riders went through many different, and sometimes conflicting, emotions: exhausted and happy it was over, sad to leave the camaraderie and the new friendships formed, pleased with their bike’s performance or thinking about mechanical improvements for next time, ready to go home, looking forward to the next Cannonball—the entire range of feelings one can experience when an event of this magnitude is suddenly over.

Class 1:

1 - #99 Todd Cameron

2 - #1 Dave Currier

3 - #109 Alex Trepanier

(Thanks Don McGovern 😁)

The Bom Jesus Shipwreck

Illustration by Jon Foster

The Oranjemund wreck refers to the remains of a Portuguese merchant ship from the first half of the 16th century that was discovered in 2008 off the desert coast of Namibia. It is generally attributed to the Bom Jesus.

The Bom Jesus was a newly built carrack that left Lisbon on Friday March 7, 1533 as part of a fleet of three ships bound for India to purchase spices (pepper, nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon). The ship was under the command of Dom Francisco de Noronha with 250 people on board, several tons of copper ingots bearing the mark of the Fuggers and a large number of coins. The ship sank due to bad weather when she hit a rock 30 meters from the current coast. He was resting at a depth of 7 to 8 meters2. The fate of the crew is unknown. However, no human remains were discovered and the proximity of the coast meant that they were able to survive.

 

The wreck was discovered on April 1, 2008 during the diamond ore mining process that was taking place along the coast of the Sperrgebiet 18 km north of Oranjemund. To do this, land located by the sea is drained over nearly 200 m by separating it from the ocean by large sand dunes and pumping water to facilitate the extraction of gravel containing the diamonds. 

Lisuarte de Abreu, the 1533 fleet showing Bom Jesus after running aground – possibly on the coast of today’s Namibia.

It was on this occasion that employees of the Namdeb diamond company discovered ingots and copper tubes and informed the archaeologists who noted the importance of the discovery since it was the oldest wreck of a European boat south of the Sahara. In order not to delay the mining operations, a first campaign of excavations is carried out from April 11, 2008 with the aim of finishing it on the 25th. In view of the importance of the discoveries, the site is essentially observed but the material is left on placed and reburied with a view to organizing a rescue excavation which was carried out from September 8 to October 10, 2008 in the presence of numerous specialists. 

The state of conservation was particularly good since the wood of the hull and many objects were protected by the large amount of copper that the ship contained, on the one hand by its weight which prevented them from being damaged by the movements currents and on the other hand by its chemical properties which have slowed down their biodegradation. Moreover, it is one of the rare wrecks which could be extracted by working on dry ground. Based on the fragments collected, the length of the boat is estimated at 40-60 meters.

 

The results of the excavations are as follows: 2288 round copper ingots weighing approximately 17 tons, 549 lead plates and ingots weighing 6.3 tons, 170 tin ingots (500 kg), 105 objects iron (5 tons), 162 wooden objects (7.5 tons), 105 elephant tusks (2 tons), 14 cannons (5 tons), 24 cannonballs (20 kg), 7 sword blades, 181 kitchen instruments (5 kg) and 10 navigation instruments (3 astrolabes, 3 compasses).

 

The coins are 2266 in number, including 1917 Spanish gold coins, essentially “excelentes” representing Isabella of Castile with her husband Ferdinand II of Aragon. To this are added 171 Portuguese gold coins, heavier and bearing the arms of John III of Portugal, 127 Portuguese silver coins, 24 gold coins from Moorish workshops and some unidentified coins.

 

The geochemical analysis of 60 copper ingots revealed a great homogeneity in their composition and that they had been treated by liquation to extract the silver with lead from the region of Krakow. The copper probably originated from the Fugger mines located at Banská Bystrica in the Slovak Ore Mountains.

The full story : Here

Nirmal Purja Project Possible

Annapurna 8091 m

Broad Peak 8047 m

Cho Oyu 8201 m

Dhaulagiri 8167 m

Everest 8848 m

Gasherbrum I 8080 m

Gasherbrum II 8035 m

K2 8611 m

Kangchenjunga 8586 m

Lhotse 8516 m

Makalu 8485 m

Manaslu 8163 m

Nanga Parbat 8125 m

Shishapangma 8027 m

Nirmal Purja is a Nepal-born naturalised British mountaineer and a holder of multiple mountaineering world records. Prior to taking on a career in mountaineering, he served in the British Army with the Brigade of Gurkhas followed by the Special Boat Service (SBS), the special forces unit of the Royal Navy. Purja is notable for having climbed all 14 eight-thousanders (peaks above 8,000 metres or 26,000 feet) in a record time of six months and six days with the aid of bottled oxygen. He was also the first to reach the summits of Mount Everest, Lhotse and Makalu within 48 hours. In 2021, Purja, along with a team of nine other Nepalese mountaineers, completed the first winter ascent of K2. It is surely one of the greatest feats of modern mountaineering. Climbing all the peaks over 8,000m represents a sprawling and often nebulous goal, even for the creme de la creme of climbers in the world. Nims Dai will not only have succeeded in joining the very closed club of mountaineers with fourteen 8,000, but will also have added a myriad of records to his credit. The movie

The Bedaux Canadian Subarctic Expedition

Everyone said it couldn't be done, but Charles Bedaux tried anyway, and the result was the legendary Bedaux Subarctic Expedition of 1934.

The Bedaux expedition of 1934, also named the Bedaux Canadian Subarctic Expedition, was an attempt by eccentric French millionaire, Charles Eugène Bedaux, to cross the wilderness of the northern parts of Alberta and northern British Columbia in Canada, while making a film, testing Citroën half-track vehicles and generating publicity for himself. Bedaux set off on this unusual excursion accompanied by more than a hundred people, including his wife, his mistress (an Italian Countess), and an Academy Award-winning film director from Hollywood, Floyd Crosby, who would later be praised for his work on High Noon. Also along for the trip were several dozen Alberta cowboys and a large film crew. To map the route of the expedition, the Canadian government sent along two geographers, Frank Swannell and Ernest Lemarque. The expedition started off at Edmonton, Alberta on July 6, 1934 and their goal was to travel 1,500 miles (2,400 km) to Telegraph Creek, British Columbia. Much of the trip would have to be made through regions that were relatively uncharted and had no trails, not to mention proper roads that would have made the going smoother for the expedition's vehicles.

Bedaux was acquainted with car manufacturer, Andre Citroën, who designed the Citroën-Kégresse equipped half-track trucks that were used on the expedition. Of the five Citroëns that the party used, two slid off of cliffs and a third was used in a shot where it was put on a raft where it was supposed to meet a stick of dynamite and explode. However, the shot was ruined when the dynamite failed to explode and the truck floated down river and was stuck in a sandbar. The last two Citroëns were abandoned near Halfway River. When the Alaska Highway was built in the 1940s, a Fort St. John man discovered the remains of these last two half-tracks and one was donated to the Western Development Museum in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. The expedition began at Edmonton, moved to Athabasca and Grande Prairie and then into British Columbia to Dawson Creek, and Fort St. John. From there the expedition headed north to Montney and then northwest to Halfway River on to Whitewater Post over the Northern Rocky Mountains. From there, Bedaux had planned for the expedition to cross over the Sifton Pass, to Dease Lake and the Stikine River to Telegraph Creek, and ultimately the Pacific Ocean. However, this final leg of the trip was never completed.