Bear Grylls gets more than he bargained for

V celebrity adventurer Bear Grylls got much more than he bargained for when he came to New Zealand to make new episodes of his Man Vs Wild TV show.

Grylls was crossing a river by a wire during filming in Mt Aspiring National Park, 250km south of Christchurch, when “everything started wobbling” and his crew saw the ground was shaking.

But they did not realise that what the extent of what happened — the devastating 6.3 magnitude earthquake –until they finished filming the next day.

Speaking to reporters in Auckland today, Grylls said he was impressed with the resilience shown by New Zealanders in the wake of the quake.

“In some ways it’s a privilege to be in New Zealand at the moment, to stand beside you in what you’re going through as a nation.

“New Zealanders are renowned around the world for being tough and resilient, that’s what makes you so darn good at rugby, but it’s that same spirit that will get you through this. My heart goes out to you,” he said.

“If I have learnt anything over the years while filming Man Vs Wild is that you can’t take the wild for granted.

“It’s that unpredictability that’s also the magic. But sometimes it turns nasty and terrible things happen. Our job is to look after each other and try to get through things together.

“If any nation on earth can cope with this, you guys sure have the spirit.”

Grylls has spent the past four weeks in New Zealand filming two episodes for the latest season of the show.

The film crew has been shooting footage in the Southern Alps, Mt Aspiring National Park, as well as Tongariro National Park and areas around Whakatane.

“I had no idea what a huge wilderness it was down there in the South Island. We travel to a lot of remote jungles but that really shocked me,” he said.

“Those mountain ranges in the South Island are vast. There are a lot of communities around these wilderness areas, but when you start branching out on foot you realise it’s a huge area,” he said.

Grylls said it would be crazy to finish a whole Man Vs Wild series and not visit New Zealand, and he had been pushing to come here for some time.

He said he had met some unappetising creatures during his adventures, but one of the worst was the tree weta in New Zealand.

“I thought it should be fine as I’ve eaten a lot of grubs like this. But it completely took me left field. Really I’ve never tasted something that tastes like you would imagine poo would taste,” he said.

Grylls also sampled a possum, which he said “tasted a bit like rat”.

One of his biggest challenges whilst filming in New Zealand was jumping off a 37 metre high waterfall, with only flax leaves and vines to help lower him down.

Grylls is speaking at Auckland’s SkyCity Convention Centre tonight about being the youngest British climber to climb Everest, at 23.

He will also speak at Wellington’s Michael Fowler Centre tomorrow night.

All proceeds will go to Wellington Children’s Hospital, victims of November’s Pike River mining disaster and the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal.

2009 Snow Sports Awards

Lake Wanaka, New Zealand (Friday July 3, 2009) Snow Sports New Zealand (SSNZ) will honour New Zealand’s top snow sports athletes, coaches, ski areas and instructors at the annual 2009 Snow Sports Awards in Wanaka Saturday evening.
Thirty-seven athletes have been nominated as finalists in nine awards categories, including alpine, cross country, adaptive, snowboarding, Freeskiing, coaching, volunteer of the year and emerging talent of the year.

The highlight of the evening will be the presentation of the Snow Sports Athlete of the Year. Winners in each sport’s athlete of the year category make up the finalists for the overall snow sports athlete of the year.

The awards cover the 2008 Southern Hemisphere season through the 2008-09 Northern Hemisphere season.

“It’s an opportunity to celebrate the on-snow successes of the past year, and to give recognition to the athletes, coaches, volunteers and other individuals who have performed with distinction,” said Snow Sports New Zealand CEO Ross Palmer. “All of the finalists deserve to be recognised.”

Motivational speaker Mark Inglis, the first double amputee to reach the summit of the world’s highest peak, Mount Everest, will be the official guest speaker.

Other awards to be handed out on the evening include the Snow.co.nz 2008 Ski Area of the Year; NZ Snow Sports Instructors Alliance (NZSIA) 2008 Instructor of the Year and 2008 Ski Racing Masters Champions.

Bottled Water?

Pacific Garbage Dump – Nightlight

Collapse of West Antarctic Ice Sheet would hit U.S. hard

Environment News

Washington — North America’s coastlines would be hit especially hard by rising sea levels if the huge West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapses and melts in a warming world as some experts fear, scientists said on Thursday.

The loss of that ice sheet alone would inundate some coastal areas, swamping New York, Washington D.C., south Florida, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle, with sea levels in some places higher by 21 feet or more than today, the researchers wrote in the journal Science.

Factors including changes in the Earth’s rotation from the loss of the huge ice sheet would make sea level changes highly variable around the globe, they said. The southern Indian Ocean region also would be heavily affected, they added. “You pay the price in North America,” University of Toronto geophysicist Jerry Mitrovica said in a telephone interview.

“The peak sea level rise occurs on the coasts of the United States — the New York area and down the coast, the eastern seaboard of the United States,” Mitrovica added. “On the West coast, it’s even just a little bit bigger.”

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet covers about 350,000 square miles (900,000 square km), the size of U.S. states Texas and Oklahoma combined. Its volume equals about 100 times the amount of water in all of North America’s Great Lakes, said Natalya Gomez of the University of Toronto, another researcher.

Mitrovica said this is not imminent, but rather: “It’s a time scale of hundreds of years.” The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates a loss of the ice sheet would raise sea levels around the world on average by about 16.5 feet. But Mitrovica said the additional ocean volume would not be like adding water to a bath tub and watching the level rise equally, due to other complicated factors.

The researchers said the melting of the ice sheet would cause the Earth’s rotation axis to shift about a third of a mile from its current position. This would move water from the southern Atlantic and Pacific oceans northward toward North America and into the southern Indian Ocean.

The loss of the ice sheet also would erase its previous gravitational pull on the surrounding ocean, pushing water away from Antarctica, they said. And the bedrock underneath could rise without the weight of the ice sheet holding it down, pushing some water out into the ocean.

The study did not consider possible melting of other ice sheets in Greenland or Antarctica that could raise sea levels.