Mar

Earthquakes & Extreme Sports

Mark Pawlak Category

chile earthquake, extreme pursuits, mountain climbing, Volcano

Nature will have her course…

Saturday’s earthquake in Chile again reminds us that the earth beneath our feet is both fragile and unpredictable. Haiti, replayed on our TV screens but this time a few thousand miles south, in one of South America’s most beautiful countries. We can only hope that it is spared the expected tremors and aftershocks.

Sport, for some, is confined to the not-so-great indoors. In my opinion, there can be nothing sadder than plodding away on a running machine while starring out of the gym window into sun-blessed countryside. Fresh air, challenges, surprises, even the unpredictability of our weather are all reason for getting out there.

Extreme sports competitors push boundaries. To do this the leisure centre indoor slope has to give way to Austrian powder, the boating lake to blasting rapids. We are out there.

But what nature has in store for us, who knows?

Taking your sport to a higher level involves risk. It requires training, planning and for sure preparedness is everything. The dangers we know, or can estimate. But nature is a force unto itself.

Some of the earth’s richest environments are so because they sit in areas of change, on fault lines where tectonic plates meet, divide and transform.

Northern Europe is fortunately some distance from such fissures, but closer to Africa, where the Eurasian plate meets the African plate, trouble brews. Where they collide volcanoes erupt creating dramatic new landforms as witnessed at Mount Vesuvius.

We have nature to thank for the Alps, for the wind and the waves, but if we think we can climb any mountain, without first doing our homework, we will only have ourselves to blame.

About the author

Mark Pawlak wrote 170 articles on this blog.

Editor at Adventure Sports Holidays, Mark's love affair with travel and the challenges of adventure sports continues... "You could save all year for a two-week, all-inclusive, doss by the pool, booze and buffet binge. Or, with a little planning and some good equipment, get off your arse and plan an adventure!"

Phung Saulters December 16, 2010 at 9:51 pm
The people behind WL used to be all anonymous, but to raise money they came out of hiding. I guess their timing was off. This is a “speeding ticket” style of justice. You get a speeding ticket because you “might” cause harm from speeding. It’s a hypothetical that govts can enforce on civilians to discourage potentially harmful acts. However, the parade of hypotheticals being very large, one must be on the lookout for potential abuse by authorities. This tug-of-war tends to get redone with each generation because the incentives for the govt are so huge.

Earthquakes & Extreme Sports

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