Here’s one way to get your kid climbing early: stash his toys at the top of the rockclimbing wall.

Mapping the great barrier reef

You can hide under the ocean, but The Google will find you!

Australian scientists at the University of Queensland’s Global Change Institute are studying the effects of climate change by teaming up with Google and the Catlin Corporation to make 360-degree visual maps of the Great Barrier Reef. They’re using an underwater camera that records 360-degree images the similar to those used by Google Maps to produce Google Street View.

The result, an interactive online feature called SeaView, is pretty nifty. Look around at one section of reef, then zoom off to another spot.

Eric Brooks boofing a drop during the Alseseca Kayak Race, the final competition in the first World Whitewater Series.

Boats and gear have changed so dramatically that paddlers are running rapids that were thought impossible 20 years ago. We went from the Dancer, a the long, high-volume boat, through a progression of smaller and smaller boats (X, Stubby, Big EZ), then back up to the Diesel, Remix and Greenboat — the whole time running harder and steeper rivers. While some boaters break waterfall records, most other boaters push the progression by running harder whitewater with more control and style.

The first kayaking competitions were slalom and wildwater racing, then playboating and squirtboating events, and lastly competitive creek racing. While each style has its “big event” – something happened over the past year with competitive creek racing that marks a new beginning: the Whitewater World Series.

The “World Series” is all about tying together some amazing kayak races around the world and naming a single world champion. Some of these races have been held annually for 15 or more years and some are more recent, but most boaters will understand the type of whitewater being raced after viewing the list of races:

• Race 1: Italy – Teva Extreme Outdoor Games
• Race 2: Norway – Voss Extreme Week
• Race 3: Austria – Adidas Sickline
• Race 4: USA – Russell Fork Race
• Race 5: USA – Green Race
• Race 6: Mexico – Alseseca Race

These races where selected by a group calling themselves the Association of Whitewater Professionals (AWP). On its website, the AWP states that a lack of organization in the industry has forced them to attempt to give direction extreme racing and so they selected these six established races to track a single champion. So, over the course of 2010, paddlers competed in the five races and results showed that the first world champion would be determined in the sixth race in Mexico between two racers: Isaac Levinson, from the US, or Eric Deguil, of France. Whoever won the Alseseca race, held this January, was to be winner of the inaugural Whitewater World Series.

The week before the race, paddlers from around the world descended onto the town of Tlapacoyan, about a 5-hour bus ride east of Mexico City. Tlapacoyan is a small town nestled in the hills with access to numerous rivers (the Mexican version of Fayettville, WV) and is home to Adventurec, an eco village/resort that hosted the race.

In the days leading up to the event, the 30 or so competitors spent evenings talking over their day’s run and comparing strategies for the race. This is one of the longer extreme races with a weird mix of flat water sprinting combined with steep drops that required your full attention.

The Alseseca is a classic river and worth having on your paddling bucket list — it is a low-flow run that drops and drops and drops some more. There are something like 15 waterfalls in 2 kilometers, and that is just the upper section. The signature rapid is S-Turn. Never have I seen a rapid that looks so nasty but also so straight forward — a 12-foot right boof into a tight channel that pinballs to the right and left downstream. This most intimidating rapid is about halfway down the river, so you paddle into S-Turn with muscle burn and out of breath — and on edge. Like many races, it turns into a mental game where you are trying to convince yourself to go faster while your gut tells you to take it slow.

Some other drops, like Sticky Hole, are micro-holes that, if not run properly, will stop your downstream flow, costing crucial seconds. Another drop called OchoTopes is straight forward, but has been know rattle heads. Most of the drops are fun, steep slides with obvious lines that will get you feeling like a champ, but not deliver the beat-down you half expect.

The race started above a 10-footer that can easily kick you off-line, but also offered a great view for spectators. This race is like no other in that there were rescue teams at 11 different drops along the course. If someone got stuck in a hole and couldn’t get out, a rescuer on a tether would jump in, flip the boater up and send him on his way. Safety was taken very seriously thanks to Aventurec’s well planned organization. There was surprisingly little carnage, although one paddler who flipped at Triple Drop cut his eyebrow and got stitches in the attending ambulance.

Racers came from six countries. While most were male boaters, three women competed. Racers were released at 3-minute intervals to give distance between paddlers. In speaking with Eric Deguil after the race, he mention the first drop kicked him far right and he thought at that moment he’d lost the race. There was one report of a swim at S-Turn and another of a blown skirt, but the safety personnel were able to assist and keep things moving along.

Deguil was able to dig deep and deliver new record time of 12:26 – breaking the old record by 30 seconds. Deguil, from the French National Downriver team, won the series; Isaac Levinson, the Green River boater from Georgia, US, took second; and Pablo McCandless, the Olympic slalom racer from Chile, came in third – a pretty elite podium.

The race continues to generate rave reviews due to the quality of this section of the Alseseca and also the numerous other rivers in this region that can be run during a visit to the area. The Whitewater World Series was great way to showcase different areas and different paddlers, and I truly hope that it continues well into the future. While I stay realistic – I continue to hope for the day when more people care about paddling. You can see the results on the Alseseca Kayak Race website and more info about the series on the Whitewater World Series website. Viva Mexico!

Photographer Jason Sutton captures snowboarder, William Hughes, riding in an LED suit in Tignes, France. Pretty amazing footage.

Here’s another item to add to your wish list for things over 50 grand. Mario Donovan, of Prescott, Arizona, has developed a camper that mounts on 4-door Jeep Wranglers. Given the Wrangler’s off-road capabilities, this means you can reside in style in lots of out-of-the places.

The 440-pound Action Camper has a pop-up roof with 6’3″ of clearance (perfect for basketball player Jeremy Lin, with his new-found fortune) and a solar panel that supplies power to the unit. The inside features a king-sized bed, a kitchen with oven, sink and refrigerator, and a dining area.

The damage: $53,500. That’s twice the price of a 2012 4-door Wrangler base model. So does that make the vehicle an accessory to the camper?

If you’re ready to pack it all up, quit your job and hit the dirtbag trail, be warned: this short documentary, A Desert Life, could put you over the edge. Directed by Austin Siadak, the film profiles Alf Randell, 53, whose spent nearly 10 years living and climbing the sandstone cliffs of Indian Creek, Utah. The audio is a bit faint, so turn up your speakers.

What happens when the Monty Python crew plans a mountaineering expedition? Mayhem, of course.

Don Starkell, in his happy place. Photo from www.paddletotheamazon.com

Don Starkell, a legendary adventurer who held the record for the longest canoe trip in history, died of cancer January 28 at his home in East Kildonan, Winnipeg. He was 79, according to the Winnipeg Free Press.

Starkell’s story is one of redemption through energetic communion with nature. Neglected by his parents as a child and subsequently shuffled through foster homes, he learned to canoe during a flood in 1950. He got hooked on paddling while shuttling food and people around in the aftermath of the deluge.

After his wife left him in 1970, he concocted a seemingly outlandish plan to paddle with his two sons, Dana and Jeff, from Winnipeg to the Amazon River. Ten years of preparation later, he and the boys launched their canoe from the banks of the Red River, headed for the Amazon.

They paddled the Mississippi and crossed the Gulf of Mexico. They were robbed, shot at and jailed. Fed up, Jeff left the expedition early, but two years and 12,000 miles after they’d left Winnipeg, Starkell and Dana reached the mouth of the Amazon in Brazil.

It stands as the longest canoe journey in history, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. The trip was chronicled in a book, Paddle to the Amazon: The Ultimate 12,000-Mile Canoe Adventure, and a documentary film is in the works.

In 1990, Starkell set out to paddle 3,000 miles through brutal cold, from Churchill, Canada, through the Northwest Passage, to the Canadian town of Tuktoyaktuk. Three years later, 30 miles short of Tuktoyaktuk, he had to be rescued when his boat froze in the icy waters. He lost part of his fingers and some toes to frostbite. The book Paddle to the Arctic: The Incredible Story of a Kayak Quest Across the Roof of the World recounts the epic.

Throughout his life, Starkell preferred to live like he was camping, even when at home. He often slept on a roll-out bed in his living room, pretending he was next to a riverside campfire. “Don’s room looked like an old explorer’s cabin,” Chris Forde, a Starkell family friend, told the National Post.

Up until very recently, Starkell was on the water, paddling a kayak around on the Red River. Bon voyage, Don. Bon voyage.

Cerro Torre in Patagonia. Photo by Alex Proimos.

If you’re looking for a spirited conversation, go chop some bolts off a famous mountaineering route. And by “spirited,” I mean prepare for a verbal smack down.

Case in point: the recent ascent of Patagonia’s jagged peak, Cerro Torre, by 21-year-old American, Hayden Kennedy, and 24-year-old Canadian, Jason Kruk. The pair reportedly climbed the route in mid-January using remarkably few bolts and in a speedy 13 hours.

But what’s gotten more buzz is that Kennedy and Kruk removed numerous bolts from the route, known as Compressor. The route was set in in 1970 by a team led by Italian mountaineer, Cesare Maestri. The team placed more than 400 bolts using a gas-powered air compressor that they hauled up the mountain — a highly questionable style of climbing then and now.

In 2007, a group of international climbers met to consider whether to remove the bolts the bolts, but in the decided to leave the route in place.

The reaction to the news that Kennedy and Kruk chopped the route has been mixed and intense. Some cheered their unilateral decision to rid the Cerro Torro face of protection placed by dubious means, while others are pissed they chopped the bolts that other climbers use without consulting the climbing community.

Upon hearing the news of the pair’s ascent, Gregory Crouch, who wrote about climbing Compressor in his book, Enduring Patagonia, offered a tempered response. While acknowledging the difficulty of the style in which Kennedy and Kruk climbed Cerro Torro, he questions the rashness of removing the route.

“I think all climbers can agree that Maestri’s Compressor Route is — or was — a world-renowned piece of climbing history, and I think all of us deplore the style and ethics of its first ascent,” Crouch wrote on his website. “However, I find myself lamenting its loss, and I’m hurt that members of my community have taken it away from me without giving me an opportunity to voice my opinion about whether or not it should stand. Without giving ANY of the rest of us that opportunity.”

Reaction to the news that they removed the bolts reached such a fevered pitch that Kennedy and Kruk felt compelled to respond with a press release chronicling their ascent and explaining their decision to clear the route.

“As long as the hardware remained it was justification for the unreasonable use of bolts by others,” they wrote. “We are part of the next generation, the young group of aspiring alpinists. This is a statement we felt other young alpinists needed to hear.”

For an in-depth and balanced primer on the history of the Compressor route and the bolt-chopping controversy, check out David Roberts and Kathryn Sall’s article in National Geographic Adventure.

And for pure entertainment’s sake, please, PLEASE, check out this video of Kruk getting his knee stuck in a crack while climbing.

Surfers testing out the new wave pool at Wadi Adventure, a new water park in Al Ain, the second largest city in Abu Dhabi. The pool is capable of making waves over 10-feet high. The park also features three artificial whitewater runs for rafters and kayakers. Now that’s oil money put to a good use.