Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary (possibly) eating Grape-Nuts on Everest in 1953. AP Photo
Your daily outdoor news bulletin for April 18, the day Paul Revere made his famous ride, getting there slightly ahead of William Dawes, who no one has ever heard of:
Grape-Nuts Wants You To Summit
Post Grape-Nuts is recruiting you to live like Sir Edmund Hillary and summit the highest peak…in your town. To celebrate Hillary becoming the first man to conquer Everest in 1953, Grape-Nuts is running a contest called Grape-Nuts Summit Sampler, in which you apply by writing a short essay on what peak you plan to summit. If one of the 60 or so selected, they will send you a prize pack (see above) including a High Sierra backpack, water bottle, other assorted goodies, and of course, some Grape-Nuts. If you follow through and summit, they will send you $500 if you send them a photo of yourself and your Grape-Nuts gear at the top. Seems like a fairly easy way to back an extra $500. Apparently Sir Hillary packed Grape-Nuts as his cereal of choice when assaulting the world’s highest mountain (they even have pics of him choking it down) and they want to celebrate it with this neat little contest, which also promotes their new addition to the team: Grape-Nuts Fit. You don’t need to summit the Everest, just the Everest of your imagination.
Applications are due by tomorrow, so you better hurry. Apply here.
Three Southeast Rivers Make Famous List
But not in a good way. Georgia’s Flint River, the Catawba River that flows in North and South Carolina, and Alabama’s Black Warrior River came in at numbers two, five, and seven respectively on American Rivers’ annual America’s Most Endangered Rivers list. The list is put out by American Rivers – a river protection group – as a way to highlight rivers that have major policy changes coming up that will affect the fate of the river, the wildlife that inhabit it, and the people in its watershed. They have put out a list every year since 1986, making it one of the longest lived annual reports in the environmental movement and last year’s list included the Potomac, Chattahoochee, and Coal rivers. The Flint was cited as having an outdated water management system, the Catawba for coal ash pollution threatening drinking water and recreation, and the Black Warrior for coal mining development threatening drinking water and fish and wildlife habitat.
See the full list and learn what you can do.
Bears Bear Brunt of Burn
A prescribed burn in Shenandoah National Park last week went exactly as planned…for the humans. The 500-acre Jarman Gap burn’s aim was to reduce hazardous fuels and the threat of a major wildfire, promote oak and pine regeneration, and increase plant diversity. The burn did not go as planned for two black bear cubs that were injured in the fire, one of which died while being treated at the Wildlife Center of Virginia (the other cub is expected to survive). Once released from the WCV, park staff will try and find the cub a new home with a nursing female black bear. Quote from Park Superintendent Jim Northrop: “We deeply regret the injuries to these two bears, but overall we are very pleased with the outcome of this burn.”
