Tag archives for mountains
Geography in the News: In Thin Air, The Highest Peaks
Posted by Neal Lineback of Maps101.com and Maps.com on March 16, 2013 By Neal Lineback and Mandy Lineback Gritzner, Geography in the NewsTM and Maps.com May is the month that high elevation climbers focus on Mt. Everest and other high mountains of the Himalaya. Many have been planning for years and will be journeying to Nepal shortly to adjust to the elevation and prepare base camps for…
BioBlitz 2012: Get out and Explore!
Posted by John Francis of National Geographic Research, Conservation, and Exploration on August 24, 2012 Rocky Mountain, National Park, Colorado – What is a BioBlitz? At its core a BioBlitz is about connecting with nature. Trained scientists team up with students and the general public—you and me—and explore a place. You take a close look at what’s around you, learn about all the living things that call that place home,…
Posted by Sandra Postel, Freshwater Fellow of the National Geographic Society and director of the independent Global Water Policy Project, is at the Rocky Mountain National Park BioBlitz today. In this video she talks about the critical importance of freshwater for all the species in the park, and the role of the park and the Rocky Mountains…
After ten years of research and writing, NG Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis has released his epic account of the first British attempts to climb Mount Everest, completing the story with the untold accounts of the team members’ experiences in World War I, and viewing the ascent from the rarely seen perspective of the Sherpas and other native people of the region.
Polish kayaker Piotr Chmielinski, most famous for his first descents of the Amazon and the Colca rivers (both stories covered in National Geographic Magazine) interviews Bernadette McDonald, author of Freedom Climbers, her latest book about Polish Himalayan climbers. McDonald’s book won her the Grand Prize at the Banff Mountain Book Festival and the Boardman Tasker Award in the United Kingdom.
Your Questions Answered From the Mountain Top
Posted by Andrew Howley of NG Staff on September 30, 2011 
Recently, National Geographic Facebook fans posted their questions for members of The Mountain Institute’s international expedition to a potentially dangerous new glacial lake in the Himalayas. Listen to their answers from the field and see photos from the spectacular journey.
Expedition to a New Glacial Lake
Posted by Andrew Howley of NG Staff on September 14, 2011 World-class scientists from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Nepal, China, Bhutan, Peru, Bolivia, Japan, the US and Europe are trekking through the Himalayas to exchange knowledge with local people about monitoring and controlling potentially dangerous new glacial lakes.
Changing Climate a Hot Topic Among Himalayan Villagers, Study Finds
Posted by Brian Handwerk on September 9, 2011 Warmer temperatures, variable monsoons, and other signs of climate change are a hot topic of conversation among many Himalayan villagers, according to scientific sampling of climate change perception among local peoples.
Reaching the top of K2 on her fourth attempt, Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner, a 40-year-old Austrian alpinist who resides in Germany, has become the first woman to summit all 14 of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks without using supplementary oxygen, National Geographic confirmed today.
How Tall Is Mt. Everest?
Posted by kmantsch on July 26, 2011 
How tall is Mt. Everest? Actually, the answer to that question is trickier than it sounds.
To the Far Horizon of Experience
Posted by Cathy Hunter on July 8, 2011 
At a White House Rose Garden ceremony on this day in 1963 , President John F. Kennedy presented the Society’s highest honor, the Hubbard Medal, to the members of the American Mount Everest Expedition. NGS staffer Barry C. Bishop, who had gotten frostbite during the climb, accepted his medal wearing white socks and a pair of sandals.
Posted by 
Dr. Stephen B. Malcolm, professor at Western Michigan University, has been studying monarch butterflies in the field for 28 years, recently with support from National Geographic’s Committee for Research and Exploration. He can tell you all about the monarchs passing through your garden this spring — and some of their mysterious cousins in South America.
Thousands of visitors trek up Africa’s equatorial volcanoes each year to see the world’s remaining mountain gorillas at close quarters. The thriving gorilla tourist economy has generally been good for the great apes, and may even have secured their survival. But a new study finds that human viruses have infected and killed gorillas. So do tourists also bring their fellow primates the kiss of death?
Finding a Home for Dracula
Posted by Stuart Pimm on March 23, 2011 National Geographic scientist Stuart Pimm reports on the quest for Dracula, a particularly lovely orchid that flourishes in the cloud forests of the northern Andes of Colombia.
Posted by By Christine Dell’Amore Christine Dell’Amore is participating in a National Science Foundation media trip to report on scientists conducting polar research near McMurdo Station, Antarctica. I made it to McMurdo Station this morning, thanks to clear skies and the smooth sailing of our C-17. When I first climbed into the plane last night, I was…
Crossing the Mera La (5400 m) into the Hongu valley. Photo by Daniel Byers Cut off from the world while crossing treacherous mountain passes in deep snow was all in a day’s work for a father-and-son team determined to trek through the remote Hongu Valley in the Himalaya Mountains of Nepal. Alton Byers, mountain geographer…
Nepal’s estimated 120 adult wild tigers do not take into account the young mountain landscape in the Churia region, so the country could be home to more big cats than believed. Using a grant from the National Geographic Society/Waitt Institute Program, biologist Kanchan Thapa is currently in the field, setting camera traps and looking for…
Update: Dangerous Trek Begins, October 21, 2010 From Alton Byers: We just arrived in Lukla and head out to the the Hongu valley tomorrow, and will be out of touch for three weeks. Once we enter the valley over the 4200 m Mera La pass, we’ll trek up valley, climb to and film the dangerous…
For the first time in more than ten years, there has been a confirmed sighting of one of the rarest and most enigmatic animals in the world, the saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis) from the Annamite Mountains of Laos and Vietnam, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said today. “The Government of the Lao People’s…
Can Colombia’s rich biodiversity escape to cooler altitudes?
Posted by Stuart Pimm on July 1, 2010 By Stuart Pimm Chingaza National Park, Colombia–Colombia didn’t qualify for the World Cup this year. You’d never know from the throngs of people around TVs everywhere I went in Bogota last week. (If you are not a football follower: Fans have to cheer for more than one team given the odds and the vagaries of…
Herp alert: A new species of South East Asian Cnemaspis gecko has been discovered in the rocky foothills of Cambodia’s Cardamom Mountains. The unique combination of its color pattern and scale characteristics, not seen in any other Southeast Asian species of Cnemaspis, has resulted in it being officially recognized as new to science, the conservation…
High-living pika can help us understand our climate fate
Posted by Stuart Pimm on February 5, 2010 By Stuart L. Pimm for NatGeo News Watch If you think small, furry rodent-like mammals are unappealing, then you have never met a pika! They look like very small rabbits, are often quite tame, and they are enormously endearing. They are usually stuffing their faces with vegetation. It’s also where they live that makes them so…
Posted by —Picture courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech Yesterday NASA successfully hurtled another telescope into the heavens: the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. Judging from the plethora of news coverage, WISE has quite a few people pretty excited. After all, NASA has only a handful of operational space telescopes up there right now … roughly 15 by my count…
