Practical Guide to Winter Hiking and Camping Expeditions – Packing List

Guide to winter hiking and camping expeditions, packing list

“Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.” This should be the motto for anyone going hiking and camping in any season, but especially in winter. When preparing your trip, ensure you understand the challenges and risks of your destinations, including weather conditions. No one can accurately predict the weather for more than a few hours in advance, especially in the mountains, so it is important to learn about best and worst case scenarios.

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An armchair trip into space

The Red Stuff[Links updated May 2020] Space is the ultimate travel destination for many. Only few actually make it. There are still only around 500 astronauts, less than 10 of which can be earmarked as true space tourists. So until space travel becomes available to the masses, we’ll have to do with armchair travels. The entertainment industry has been working hard over the years to take us along on trips all across the Universe. Most of this is through fictional stories of alien worlds, populated by strange and often hostile creatures. Far from reality, but fueling our desire to travel to the stars. Continue reading

Hiking Glenturret – The Grouse Experience

Famous Grouse ExperienceGlenturret is a small glen in the Scottish Highlands of Perthshire, just north of the little town of Crieff. Within easy reach of nearby Glasgow and Edinburgh, this is the southern edge of the true Scottish Highlands, that extend from here to the rough North Coast. It is an area famous for a typical Scottish bird: The Grouse. The easy access makes this a great area for hiking and camping in the hills. It literally takes minutes to go from friendly Crieff town square to the rugged and remote hills of the Highlands. With my company Expedition Factory I organized an early spring mini-expedition to this wonderful place. Please follow me on a virtual tour to Glen Turret: Continue reading

Kennedy Space Center – a Space Traveler Guidebook

KennedySpaceCenter_022The number one bucket list destination for any space geek traveler is Kennedy Space Center. America’s biggest and oldest space port is the center point of American space history, space present and space future. Conveniently located on the east coast of Florida, it is close to many other tourist hot spots, making it an ideal holiday destination. This post has all the tips for the first time visitor, but also offers some insider’s ‘secrets’ for those that have been there already and may consider a follow-up visit. Kennedy Space Center is much more than just the Visitor Complex. Continue reading

Baikonur Cosmodrome – Gateway To Space

Proton launch pad

Baikonur Cosmodrome is the largest space port in the world. Thousands of launches have taken place from here, making it the true birth place of space exploration. Worldwide it is only rivaled by Kennedy Space Center in the United States. Many ‘firsts’ in space were constructed and launched from Baikonur, starting with Sputnik, the world’s first satellite, in 1957. The first person in space, Yuri Gagarin, launched from here in 1961, as did the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, in 1963. Continue reading

Baikonur Cosmodrome – The Last Place on Earth

Baikonur CosmodromeBaikonur Cosmodrome. Located literally in the middle of nowhere in Central Asia. Hardly an attractive or easy place to travel to. Yet on the bucketlist of most of my spacegeek-friends on social media. I have written a few posts on this place already, most recently writing a travel guide to the city of Baikonur. This post describes Baikonur Cosmodrome from the perspective of its most important visitors. For space travelers Baikonur truly is the Last Place on Earth. Next stop: Space! Continue reading

City Trip: A day in Cleveland

Cleveland_17Industrial and industrious would be good words to describe the city of Cleveland, Ohio. Founded in 1796 on the western frontier of the early United States, it became a center of heavy industry and transportation, before entering into a decline in the early 1980’s, followed by a slow revival from the late 1990’s. Perhaps not the most obvious US city trip destination, but Cleveland certainly has plenty to see and do to warrant a few days of your time. Especially for the space historian it has a lot of cool stuff, making Cleveland a must-see. Follow me on a virtual tour to Cleveland, Ohio: Continue reading

Instawalk through smalltown America – Athens, Ohio

Instawalk_Athens_Ohio_SSP15_14Thinking about the United States, most travelers will have images of skyscrapers in big cities, steep red mountains in endless desert plains, wonderful sunny beaches or lush national parks with deep canyons and luxurious mountain resorts. However, 80% of the United States consists of small towns, away from the big cities, totally off the tourist track. People live a simple, slow paced life, relatively secluded from the rest of the world, in tight-knit communities. These communities are often based around a particular industry or agriculture. Please follow me on a virtual trip to Smalltown USA: Continue reading

Save the Planet! … from asteroids

Emergency Asteroid Defence Project“Those Asteroids that hit this morning – those were nothing – the size of basketballs and Volkswagens. This new one we’re tracking is the size of Texas, Mr. President. It’s what we call a Global Killer… the end of mankind. Half the world will be incinerated by the heat blast… the rest will freeze to death in a nuclear winter…” This quote from the 1998 disaster movie Armageddon perfectly matched the simulation that was played as an exercise at the IAU Planetary Defense Conference in Italy a few weeks ago. Continue reading

Winterhike blog – Skarvan og Roltdalen 2015

Intense Arctic IV – Leadership Expedition Norway

The next morning the group discusses the goal for the day. We decide to leave our camp where it is and hike to the nearby lake. The wind is still very strong, preventing us from climbing the higher summits in the park.Is it really climate change or just a very mild Arctic winter? When we landed at Trondheim Vaernes Airport it was six degrees and the area was free of snow. This is 63 degrees North, only a few hundred kilometers short of the Arctic Circle! The taxi driver who took us into the mountains had never experienced such a snowless and spring-like February in this area of Central Norway. Would this become a spring hike in winter? Would we be carrying our full winter expedition gear across green fields filled with flowers? Continue reading