Hang Gliding - the scenery, the adrenaline, risk of death and the undeniable urge to eat a memory stick...

When it rains it pours. And in the past week, two hang gliding accidents in BC have me scratching my head and wondering, is hang-gliding safe?

In the first incident, a women hang gliding in the Agassiz area wasn’t strapped in properly by her instructor, allegedly, and she fell to her death. Even stranger, the instructor was taken to the hospital where doctors, and the cops, are waiting for him to, er, *pass* the memory stick with key information.

Those crazy hang-gliding instructors, I tell ya…

In the second incident, less than three days later, a glider became stranded on a hill and had to be rescued. A little better than the whole death thing, but it kinda makes you wonder if hang-gliding is safe…

Think I’ll stick to shark diving

Aussies have surfing (grrrrrr). The UK has rugby. The Americans have damn well what ever they like. And us Canucks? Well we do one thing really well…we do cold like no other country on Earth. Heck, it’s actually below zero in BC right now. For the adventure travel junkie this means one thing…Ski slopes!! Canadians might find even more comfort knowing that, according to numerous polls by international ski buffs, and this one among them, Canadians do skiing so well that we’re on top of the list. Check out the Ten Best Ski Resorts on Earth. And the winner is…Whistler Blackcomb!!!

A very good read in the Vancouver Sun this week, in a five-part series about sharks in Canadian waters. Several years back, researchers were surprised to find a ‘hot-spot’ of over 10,000 sharks off the Queen Charlottes. According to researchers, many of the sharks were blue sharks, and over 28 different species of sharks swim Canadian waters, including blue sharks, salmon sharks, and of course my personal favourite, the great white (very rare in BC). That’s the cool news. The downer is that sharks are generally few and far between, not just in Canada, but world-wide, with some species decimated by over 90 per cent in the past 20 years. That sucks. Check out the series, and Sharktruth.com, for the issues facing the ocean’s top predators, and why losing sharks is devestating to the planet, and to humanity.

I guess you can tell that I like sharks?

Relax, they’re not great whites.  Even if they were, you’d have a greater chance of witnessing the Vancouver Canucks hoist the Stanley Cup in your lifetime than be attacked by a shark (I’m a Canucks fan, albeit a jaded and disillusioned one, I guess it shows huh?).  These are salmon sharks, and they’re not uncommon off the coast of British Columbia.

This video shows a juvenile salmon shark stranded on Chesterman Beach.  Surfers and beachcombers have reported the little guys beach themselves in Pacific Rim National Park sometimes.  While it remains unclear why this happens, this video has a happy ending.  A kind-hearted couple happened upon the little shark and took her (it appears to be a female) to another side of the beach.  After trying to revive her in the water for 15 minutes, the shark came to, and slowly came back to life in the bay, before (hopefully!) swimming back to sea.  The video is over seven minutes long, but it’s really heart-warming to see the little shark come back to life after certain death.  Anyone who knows me personally knows that I’m a huge shark freak.  I learned of this encounter at the BC Shark and Skate Reports blog.  Very cool indeed!

Adrenaline junkies in BC have reason to feel hardcore once again. Raid the North Extreme, a 500 km wilderness race held every year in Canada is coming to the Kootenays in September. The race comprises of teams of four and takes teams across some of Canada’s toughest wilderness by kayak, canoe, fixed rope, mountain bike and on foot. Or to put it another way for us city folks, it’s like The Amazing Race in the boonies. This is not a race for the Sheraton crowd!