Cold Splinters

John Gierach is an American author and freelance writer living and working in Larimer County, Colorado. He has to date written over 20 books on fly-fishing, and is a regular contributor to Field & Stream, as well as having a monthly column in the NY Times. Watch that video above and chew on it for a bit.

This is a great life we live.

Mark Kryskow, one of my best friends from the University of Colorado, is someone I’ve written about before here on CS, describing him as an “animal, more fit and strong and crazy than anyone I have ever met, or probably ever will meet.” It was impossible to keep up with Mark in college. Waking up at 3am to ride your bike to Estes Park and back (37 miles each way in the mountains) was not part of my agenda. Mark lives up in New Hampshire now, so I get to see him pretty regularly, either in North Conway for an ice climbing adventure, in Portsmouth (while visiting my folks) for a beer and a burrito, or in Alton at his house on Lake Winnepsaukee, alongside his equally crazy immediate and extended family.

Mark is one of the humblest guys I’ve ever met, so of course he didn’t tell me that he was featured in an article in Outside this month, in a profile of the Army program he works for, studying the effects of altitude and extreme conditions on the human body. When I called him last night to talk about it, he quickly changed the subject, probably because they refer to him as one of the “hardest of the hard” and pull a quote that details a test that involved a tube up his ass. The article isn’t specifically about Mark, but I couldn’t be happier to see him gracing the pages of Outside. Makes it even better that he and his wife don’t give a shit.

From the article:

One of the hardest of the hard men is Sergeant Kryskow, a recreation rock and ice climber who has participated in “eight or nine studies,” including one designed to test a helmet prototype that cooled the wearer’s head with streams of air coming from the lining. Researchers wanted to know if cooling the head cooled the body as well. To test this, Kryskow and others walked for hours on a treadmill in 120-degree heat, fitted with anal and esophageal temperature probes.

“It was kind of miserable,” Kryskow tells me, suddenly transported back to that test. “You’re tired, you’re dehydrated, you’ve got a probe in your ass and another down your throat. But I like the challenge.”

And in honor of Mark giving up his “horn” for a climbing helmet…

MP3: John Coltrane – Giant Steps

What is hardcore? Fitz Cahall over at Dirtbag Diaries (a CS fav) ponders this claim to be the “homecoming king of the outdoor adventure world”. Remember, talk is cheap but does this even matter? Fitz picks apart the titles in this most recent Dirtbag Diaries podcast.

“Lots of us push ourselves towards something bigger. Busting our lungs on trail runs, entering cyclocross races, crashing bikes, skinning up ridges until we don’t think we’ll have the legs to ski down, kicking crampon steps a thousand at a time, wondering why we got out of bed and packed a backpack before our neighbors even got home from the bar. All of these are entry points to hardcore, things that can break you if you let them, but none of them by themselves is a universal litmus test for being hardcore. Perhaps hardcore can be pursued, but can never be achieved …like enlightenment.”

Listen here and then subscribe to the podcast.

From Brooks Saddles’ Great Bike Travelers Series

Bill Hafeman was a master birch-bark canoe builder from Big Fork, Minnesota. CBS interviewed Hafeman in 1982, where at the time Hafeman was seen as one of the last craftsman left in America still building these canoes. CBS returned in 2008 to interview Hafeman’s grandson, who carries on his grandfather’s legacy, building birch-bark canoes by hand in the north woods.

Hafeman in his 1982 interview…

“I wanted to live in a wild country like the Indians did … I didn’t want to live in a city where you go to work by a whistle, go home by a whistle.”

WATCH: Hafeman Boat Works 1982, 2008

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In case you have yet to watch VBS’ Heimo documentary in full, make sure you do yourself a huge favor and stop here over the weekend. And when you’re finished watching, read an interesting interview with James Campbell, Heimo’s cousin and author of The Final Frontiersman, the book about Heimo, at Viceland.

And if you still can’t get enough of Heimo world, then watch a video of John Martin from Vice eat some very fresh caviar while making the documentary. That’s after the jump..

Well done, VBS. Well done.

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Ken Sanders has been in the rare book business in Utah since the 1970s, founding Dream Garden Press in 1980 and Ken Sanders Rare Books in 1990. Dream Garden is responsible for the 10th Anniversary R. Crumb-illustrated version of Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang, which can be purchased in book form and/or t-shirt form here. (Hayduke’s my favorite.) If you’re around these parts often enough, you’ll know I’m a huge Abbey fan, and with the MWG movie coming out soonish, Sanders was kind enough to answer a few questions about the making of the book and the 1987 Monkey Wrench Gang calendar.

Where did the idea to have R. Crumb illustrate The Monkey Wrench Gang come from?

I had been familiar with Crumb’s work since Zap Comix and the 60s. In my mind’s eye, I could just see the Crumb caricatures of Abbey’s characters. His artwork was perfect for the exaggerated comedic style of the novel. Crumb originally turned me down. He had never heard of Ed Abbey or The Monkey Wrench Gang. I went through two years worth of other artists that didn’t work out until I returned to Crumb. This time around I was smart enough to send him a paperback of the book and offer him pretty good money to do the project. Once he had actually read the novel, he was eager to proceed.

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