Outdoor Recreation

Meals on the trail can be as delicious and varied as meals prepared at home. You can create meals to suit your tastes or diet--vegetarian, low fat, Asian, Italian. Meals prepared and dehydrated at home are compact and lightweight, perfect for the backpacker, and safer than packing perishable foods. The author shows how to prepare the meals so that they will travel well and will be easy to reconstitute in camp. The easy step-by-step instructions detail how to cook and dry lightweight, satisfying meals at home and then prepare them easily in camp--truly complete, instant meals. Includes over 160 recipes for soups, stews, pasta, casseroles, and breakfast and snack ideas as well as tips on drying food in a dehydrator or oven.

FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. The author describes his spring 1996 trek to Mt. Everest, a disastrous expedition that claimed the lives of eight climbers, and explains why he survived.

In her fourth travelogue, Susie and her husband take to their bikes to explore the Marne valley, following in the carriage tracks of Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI in their abortive escape attempt from the French revolution.

Susie is not a born cyclist, as she discovers within the first five minutes of a journey that will last three weeks. Neither does she look her best in Lycra cycling gear. While her husband whirls along effortlessly, she frequently grinds to a halt and has to be rescued. But the pair keep pedalling, from the glitz of Versailles to the hilly Champagne vineyards, via a hair-raising ride through Paris and through quaint provincial towns and sombre battlefields.

Like the best-selling "Best Foot Forward – a 500-mile walk through hidden France", and "Travels with Tinkerbelle – 6,000 miles around France in a mechanical wreck", "The Valley of Heaven and Hell – cycling in the shadow of Marie-Antoinette" is an enjoyable mixture of travel and history, told in Susie's characteristically light-hearted and self-depreciating style. One for armchair travellers to enjoy, or a good holiday read.

"This book manages to combine history, humor and the best of travel writing all in one."

"As someone who enjoys reading about travel on foot or bicycle I can say its as good as any I've read and is a massively entertaining and satisfying read."

"When it's funny it's laugh-out-loud funny, and when it's sad it is heart-breaking."

The Appalachian Trail trail stretches from Georgia to Maine and covers some of the most breathtaking terrain in America–majestic mountains, silent forests, sparking lakes. If you’re going to take a hike, it’s probably the place to go. And Bill Bryson is surely the most entertaing guide you’ll find. He introduces us to the history and ecology of the trail and to some of the other hardy (or just foolhardy) folks he meets along the way–and a couple of bears. Already a classic, A Walk in the Woods will make you long for the great outdoors (or at least a comfortable chair to sit and read in).

For Any Climate, in Any Situation.

Newly updated to reflect the latest in survival knowledge and technology, the internationally bestselling SAS Survival Handbook is the definitive resource for all campers, hikers, and outdoor adventurers. From basic campcraft and navigation to fear management and strategies for coping with any type of disaster, this complete course includes:

Being prepared: Understanding basic survival needs and preparing essentials, such as a pocket survival kit.

Making camp: Finding the best location, constructing the appropriate shelter, organizing camp, and creating tools.

Food: What to eat, what to avoid, where to find it, and how to prepare it.

First aid: A comprehensive course in emergency/wilderness medicine, including how to maximize survival in any climate or when injured.

Disaster survival: How to react in the face of increasingly frequent natural disasters and hostile situations—and how to survive at home if all services and supplies are cut off.

A Book of Kells recalls the lives of John Kell and Kathleen Ward who meet in 1917 when he is a Canadian sailor stationed in Portsmouth, England. Her father, a Methodist Sunday School teacher, brings him home for tea. Kathleen’s sister writes to Jack until she gets married in 1924 and Kathleen takes up the correspondence. Meanwhile, Jack has been getting an education and has spent a year as a student minister on a Cree mission field where he plans to return for another five years. When he gets Kathleen’s letter it is like manna from heaven. The courtship is awkward and tumultuous. She asks him to come over for another look but, when he does, she rebuffs him. However, they agree to give themselves a year to reconsider. Seventy-two letters get through, even though the Indian reserve is cut off from civilization for six months of the year. They marry in 1927, she goes up to Oxford House by canoe along the old fur trade route, and she treks for five days by horse-drawn toboggan in mid-winter to give birth to a baby. When I enter the picture during the Great Depression, a stressed-out minister’s wife and three little girls are crammed into a duplex on a working-class street in Toronto. We’re working our hearts out as little "examples," trying to help Father. In later years, I discovered an emotional toll to pay. I couldn’t sit through a church service without breaking into unrestrained weeping. My teen-age and college years were full of turmoil. What seemed to be the fundamental problem was that I had been trained to put away my ego in favor of redeeming my soul. Still, religion was a great strength, protecting our family from tendencies towards alcoholism and mental illness. I struggle desperately to avoid the pitfall of black sheep, which seemed inevitable for the youngest of three "perfect" minister’s daughters. The name of this family voyage recalls the famous ninth-century gospel manuscript illuminated by monks.

WILCO VAN ROOIJEN: SURVIVING K2
Surviving two days in the Death Zone

In the summer of 2008 the 'Norit K2 expedition' climbed without additional oxygen the 8611 meter high peak of K2 in Pakistan. During the descent the expedition turned from triumph to tradedy. One of the biggest tradedy's in mountain climbing history. Statistical every quarter 'conqueror' will die on the "Killer Mountain". In 2008 11 climbers lost their life. The news was going over the whole world from CNN, Al-Jazeera, Sky News, BBC, New York Times etc.

Wilco van Rooijen, the Dutch expedition leader has been missing for three days and give up by the outside world. On his last strength he came back a life out of the 'Death Zone'. The 'Norit K2' Expedition 2008 paid a high price. What exactly took place that August 1, 2008? How could this tragedy have taken place?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF87ZZ0kKx4&feature=plcp&context=C478f53cVDvjVQa1PpcFMJZwOaH-BfYzrz5XShOh3dzhyfT-uq71c=

Before Georgetown physics professor Francis Slakey decided to climb the highest mountain on every continent and surf every ocean, he had shut himself off from other people. His lectures were mechanical; his relationships were little more than ways to fill the evenings. But as his journey veered dangerously off course, everything about him began to change. A gripping adventure of the body and mind, To the Last Breath depicts the quest that leads Slakey around the globe, almost takes his life, challenges his fiercely held beliefs, and opens his heart. The scientist in Slakey explores the history of Robert Falcon Scott’s doomed Antarctica expedition, the technology of climbing, and the geophysics of waves. But it is the challenges he endures and the people he encounters — a Lama who gives him a mysterious amulet, a life-or-death choice atop Everest, an ambush at gunpoint in Indonesia, a head-on collision in the high desert — that culminate in a moving lesson about what it means to be human.

This is the greatest account of bold manhood in maritime history.This is the true story of the RMS Titanic as told by the people who knew.