METS PITCHER R.A. DICKEY IS GOING TO CLIMB KILIMANJARO IN TWO WEEKS FOR CHARITY AND THE NEW YORK franchise totally blew a chance at superb P.R. Typical. The franchise sent a letter to the Mets ace asking him not to make the attempt, which he’s doing to raise awareness for a charity called Bombay Teen Challenge, an organization that rescues and cares for women and girls in Mumbai who are at risk of being abused and exploited. He plans to blog and post during the expedition to the summit of the 19,300-foot peak, which is considered about as technically easy as any mountain of its height. Dickey has already raised $50,000 for Bombay Teen Challenge and a whole bunch of awareness…And the Mets greeted Dickey’s cause with Bronx cheering, saying if he gets hurt he could void his contract. Via NYT

A RAGING FOREST FIRE IS BURNING CHILE’S TORRES DEL PAINE NATIONAL PARK, where winds over 60 miles an hour quadrupled the size of the blaze in a single day, burning over five percent of the 927-square-mile park that’s considered one of the most scenic places to hike and climb on earth. Chilean President Sebastian Pinera declared a state of emergency and tripled the number of firefighters attacking the blaze — at first a paltry 120-man crew was trying to contain the blaze as it spread to over 30,000 acres. Pinera has also called for international aid to help fight the fire and Argentina, which has parkland just across the border, has responded. Historically most fires in the park have been human-caused because Torres del Paine is generally fairly wet, even during summer. Via Bloomberg

NEWS FLASH: YOUR VO2 AIN’T MAX. Yeah, we just told you about a Swiss study recently that suggests that neurochemicals are there to protect us from over-revving our systems (a.k.a., VO2 max isn’t purely physiological) but this South African study suggests that the “brain fuse” can be bypassed. They took subjects and had them start at their previously achieved “maximum,” which had been arrived at via a typical stress test of slowly ratcheting the pace/resistance. The subjects then BEGAN a new series of tests at above that prior max and were able to go about 4 percent harder, and then the scientists slowly backed off the resistance. The researchers believe that because the test subjects knew that the above-max effort would be short-lived, their brains granted the extra-hard work rather than hitting the dose of trip-wire chemicals that would normally prevent such an effort. Via British Journal of Sports Medicine

PINE BEETLES ARE DESTROYING THE LANDSCAPE OF BRITISH COLUMBIA, killing enough trees to halve the output of the timber business of the provence and releasing 250 million metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, the equivalent of all the car and light truck emissions in Canada for five years or enough wood to build a city of eight million homes. In Kluane National Park and Reserve, Yukon spruce beetles have killed over 1,400 square miles of white spruce, a forest four times the size of Yellowstone. The habitat destruction can’t be seen in isolation, either: The beetles are ravaging forests worldwide because the earth is warming, and the effects of this simple fact will be felt on a global scale. Via Vancouver Sun

Tagged as: alpinism, climbing, environment, fitness, forests, health, mountain