"At his peak, Dean Potter was a figure similar to Alex Honnold-the leading free-soloist in the game. But he was also a much more enigmatic and eccentric character than Honnold. It is also true that Potter remains one of the all-time great culture heroes of American rock-climbing."
The early morning sun is bursting around the dark corners of High Dodd and Sleet Fell, sending a flush of light across the golden bracken and on to the hammered silver of the lake.
After hauling supplies across ice and hip-high snow in temperatures dropping to minus 30 degrees, all while battling calorie crashes and the strain of a sprained ankle, an adventurous Wicklow teen who conquered an Arctic expedition with her father says the feat made her realise she is "more capable than I thought".
I'd been stopped maybe 2 seconds and the slope started to move. I pivoted to straightline but was swamped-no speed, no chance. The impact was like stepping off a curb in front of a 40 Tonne truck doing 60 mph.
On the face of it, the RSPB picking Ned Stark as the host of the new series of their podcast seems odd. But it turns out he's been a birder since childhood, who crams in birdwatching between acting gigs. He's warm and honest in his first podcast, chatting to fellow ornithology lover Elbow's Guy Garvey about spotting different species while working abroad, recognising bird song and the meditative joy of watching the feathered creatures. Alexi Duggins Widely available, episodes fortnightly
Even before Matt Weston had won his solo gold medal last Friday, skeleton was easily the most watchable sport of the Winter Olympics, because the commentary was so soothing. Tangle with snowboarding and you're going to hear a lot of unfamiliar words grabs, spins, flips and rail manoeuvres accompanied by the modifiers spectacular and ooh, and commentators won't tell you what any of it means because they're too excited, even though that is their one job.
Cody Cirillo and Matthew Tufts set out to do something that sounds simple until you picture the map, the season, and the wind. In the dead of winter, they bike-packed and skied their way around Iceland on a 1,000-mile, 35-day, human-powered loop. Their new film, A Hundred Words for Wind , released December 18, tracks the whole push, from ice-choked roads and sideways rain to those rare, hard-won windows when the mountains finally opened long enough to climb and ski.
