A modern pioneering couple who went from supporting themselves by mushroom picking in the Yukon to controlling vast shares of gold claims. They had rough time starting out: :

“One season, he and Wood picked morels worth tens of thousands of dollars, but ended the year broke after crashing a used helicopter they purchased with all of the money they made….To minimize their cash outlay, Wood and Ryan moved into an abandoned miner’s shack. Their new home was made of tin, and it had neither running water nor electricity. Ryan spent winter nights by the wood stove reading old mining journals.”

Now:

“He and Wood own more than 35,000 claims. ‘We just passed Luxembourg, and over the summer we’ll be the size of Samoa,’ he continued, describing just one of his projects. Credible estimates of the amount of gold still buried in his properties run to the billions of dollars…

To Ryan, the notion that gold wasn’t worth looking for was absurd. The market might profess disinterest, but this was cash in the ground. His closest friend, Antoine Deschenes, a rail-thin, 6-foot-4 Quebecois, had an idea. ‘In the winter the Yukon runs clear,’ he said.

The significance of his insight is hard to appreciate without a bit of background. The gold of the Klondike rush was placer gold, found at the bottom of creeks and streams. Deschenes imagined that some of this gold had, during tens of millions of years of erosion, traveled all the way down the Klondike into the Yukon River. At Dawson, the Yukon is opaque from mixing with the water of the silt-laden White River. But in the winter the White is frozen solid. Therefore, the Yukon runs clear, and a daring prospector could dive in and find the riches he sought just lying there, in plain sight.”

Here’s an 11-year-old who listened to his Mom and got inside a dryer so he wasn’t crushed when the tornado smashed his house. (They mention he was watching PBS on TV just before the tornado hit, so maybe that’s why he’s so smart.)

I did not know women could climb. I did not know there were women engineers. And women engineers that climb, who knew?

A PBS video interview with a woman engineer, including what music she likes while climbing. (Next time I am climbing, I will look around to see if there are any women. Or any engineers. Or any arches or columns. Or gothic cathedrals.)

Any of you parents can appreciate this stirring rendition of the song “Ain’t Gonna Pee Pee In My Bed Tonight.” I saw this video on Black Diamond’s website. I hope this family had some government intervention.

Climbing is inherently dangerous. More dangerous than motorcycle racing? More dangerous than mountain biking? Maybe not as dangerous as driving on the highway. Here’s what this guy says about dangerous activities.

Some nice shots of Paklenica National Park in Croatia here.

This photographer spent more than a year and traveled the world to put together this “5,000 megapixel photograph of the entire night sky stitched together from 37,440 exposures.”

There are some free downloads and an interactive 360 degree photo here.

I think this is the best-named climbing area in the world – “Cirque of the Unclimbables.” Here’s part one of a climb done last summer. Second part here.

“In summer 2010, Lorna Illingworth, Madaleine Sorkin and I spent 25 days in the Cirque of the Unclimbables, Northwest Territories, Canada. Our goal was to free climb the entire 1963 Original Route on the sheer 2000′ Southeast Face of Proboscis, and grants from the American Alpine Club encouraged us to document the adventure. The result: Women at Work (VI 5.12 R). -Emily Stifler”

As you can see from this photo, planking can build strong abs. Here is an article about the practice of planking outdoors in unusual places.

“The first thing a serious planker needs is a healthy disregard for the law — and personal safety. A sense of adventure will also come in handy.”

A story of canyoneering in one of the most famous canyons in Utah – Neon Canyon. In his attempt to extricate himself from a keeper pothole, he realizes he should’ve practiced aid climbing before he needed to rely on it to climb a sheer wall. It occurs to him:

“this is the sort of thing you really should practice before you need it to save your life.”

This photo shows the main attraction of this canyon – the final rappel into “The Golden Cathedral.”