The best extreme sports video ever?

Mark Pawlak    Adventure Sports & Travel Thoughts     Action Sports, Adventure Sports, extreme sports, sport videos, Sports

How many times have you clicked on a link to “The sickest extreme sports vids” or “The craziest extreme sports clips” only to be disappointed?

We specialise in adventure travel and extreme sports and can tell you this clip is the best collection of extreme sports videos we have ever seen. Enjoy!

If you can beat it, prove it by sending in your link…

Does the Grand Canyon provide the best white water?

Mark Pawlak    Adventure Sports & Travel Thoughts, ash     Colorado River, Grand Canyon, New Zealand, north america, Peru, united states, whitewater rafting, zambezi

Looking at white-water rafting spots, it’s clear there is a premier league of locations. But what sets aside the best, from the rest?

The wildest waterways are found scattered around the globe. But to make a river into rapids requires the correct topography (steepness of the river bed, narrowing of the river course, and obstructions).

Photo from Flickr user: Video4net

And it needs nature and her rainfall, or snowfall, to create the volume before the flowing, frightening and frothy mass pours downstream.

The Grand Canyon hardly sounds like the best spot to go looking for white-water rapids. It’s a huge empty cavern famous for its redwall limestone. But wait. Forget the postcard pictures brought back from Vegas – the Grand Canyon was formed by the Colorado River; this divides into tributaries and narrows in places to form some of the fastest rapids there are. read more

Top Ten Winter Ski Resorts

Mark Pawlak    Adventure Sports & Travel Thoughts, ash, bestskiholidays, New Ski Holiday Ideas, snowboardingholidays, snowkitingholidays, Top 10 Adventure Sports Travel Lists     america, aspen, austria, Canada, Europe, extreme sports, France, jasper, les arcs, les lenas, north america, Skiing, snow kiting, snow park, Snowboarding, solden, soll, st anton, usa, whistler, winter sports

It’s that time again!

As the summer shines its last warm rays, we look back on a great few months. Long days, late nights and even longer beaches; in many ways it was the perfect summer.

But with the winter comes opportunity: downhill opportunity, off-piste opportunity, freestyle opportunity; yes the winter season is here and we’ve set up the Top Ten Winter Ski Resorts to tempt you into your bindings once more…
read more

Chilean Miners come up, while sports fans go down…

Mark Pawlak    Adventure Sports & Travel Thoughts     Abseiling, cave, Caving, Chile, climbing, miners, mountains, navigation, Potholing, South America, Spelology, techniques

There’s a rare breed of people who spend their time crawling through caves and descending into the depths of mountains – and they are not miners in Chile.

Potholing and caving have never been mass interest sports but are seriously challenging endeavours. These sports are not considered fashionable or easy to brand, nor are they typically competitive. And, what is rarely noted is just how dedicated potholers and cavers need be.

Photo from Flickr user: Jarvist Frost

The two disciplines developed from Spelology, the science of caves and, as you can imagine, are used to complement each other. read more

Adventure Sports Travel: How the Plastiki expedition made eco-waves

Mark Pawlak    Adventure Sports & Travel Thoughts     21st Century Challenges, Adventure Sports, David de Rothschild, everest, nature, plastiki, pollution, recycling, Richard Thompson, Royal Geographical Society, Travel, waste

We’ve all seen the images: piles of plastic bottles and expedition detritus dumped at Everest’s base camp. In another moment it would be an art installation, drawing our attention to the problem, but it’s not. It’s the everyday neglect and complacency that is spoiling what the Nepalese call the ‘goddess of the sky’.

Recently, an expedition led by David de Rothschild aboard the Plastiki raised awareness of the threat plastic bottles has on marine life. The Plastiki, a catamaran made almost entirely from plastic bottles, sailed 15,000km across the Pacific Ocean.

Plymouth University’s Professor Richard Thompson notes that most plastics are made to be thrown away: “We now find plastic debris widespread in the oceans, at the sea surface, down to the seabed; from the poles through to the equator.” read more

Booking Adventure Sports Holidays: How the web can work for you

Mark Pawlak    Adventure Sports & Travel Thoughts, ash     adventure sports holiday, Adventure Travel, Adventure Travel Blogs, country information, Travel, travel advice, Travel News

Information is everywhere. Would-be adventure sports travellers can pick up everything they ever needed to know about a trip before they’ve even left their front room. Or can they?

The internet has long been a force for good. The availability to access information, from all sources, of all opinions is something we now take for granted – as is the objectivity of much of the information we actually receive.

Search results have long been dominated by Wikipedia and the leading news providers, so it’s difficult searching for anything today – while the web has widened it has also narrowed.

So, is there one place you can find that definitive country guide? The simple answer is, No – and we write them!

The best advice for travellers is to search wide and deep. By this, we mean look past the top ranking Google returns; search for blogs as well as news, and especially seek out local news sources. read more

Extreme Sports and The Evolution of Skate

Mark Pawlak    Adventure Sports & Travel Thoughts, ash     Adventure Sports, extreme sports, skate, Skateboarding, Surfing

When surfers took to skating on land, a new chapter in extreme sports was opened.

Much has changed since those halcyon days.  Yet while trucks are unrecognizable from the first sets that rolled, many of the more casual moves are the same, some becoming classic, even legendary. read more