Solar power: GoalZero gear 2014 – 2016
Two years ago GoalZero expanded its ambassador’s programme to the East and I was presented by Absolut Explorer with a nice selection of gear to use and abuse. Up until then I either assumed that expeditions will mean long periods of disconnect or that at best an eclectic combination of devices and solutions (not all of them compatible) will manage somehow to keep alive a phone or an e-book Reader while camped in a tent up on a mountain. Partnering up with GoalZero changed that dramatically. In 2010 it was the first time I used, on an expedition in Alaska, a solar panel with a battery. The aim was to power up a sat-phone and a PDA so I can communicate back to Romania. A fairly light setup, it was also light on offering… Car lighter connectivity and low output battery it meant that I could charge only one device at a…
T16, South summit, Zanskar, India “Supercouloir” ED – first ascent
I In the winter of 2016 I received a request from a free-lance journalist, Maya K. Prabhu, asking for opinions on the alpinism scene in India for a piece she was preparing for the USA based magazine ‘Alpinist’. (Since then the article has appeared in issue nr 54 / summer 2016 under the title Notes from the Frontier). Following the conversation with Maya I felt like I somehow left a rather pessimistic pronouncement regarding the young ‘alpine-style’ aspiring mountaineers in India and, through my involvement in the first Climbathon organized by the IMF in 2013, I knew quite a few of them… That’s not to say I have not been honest about my appraisal, but I felt somehow I was also a bit too harsh… Cristina and I were looking for a project for 2016 and, probably more than ever, not finding the project was the problem but how to finance it.…