National Pars Traveler has posted a very sad article about two climbers who fell in Grand Teton National Park. Apparently they fell while climbing on Sunday and were reported missing yesterday. When rangers went looking for them, they spotted the bodies, but as of this time they can't be reached due to unsafe conditions in the area. The names of the climbers are being withheld at this time. (Thanks for the heads up Carl!)

It's been a rough week on the climbing community. First we had word on Lara Kellogg, and yesterday The Adventurist posted this story with the terrible news that both Andi Orgler and Kasper Ochsner died on separate climbs. And if that wasn't enough, ExWeb has reported that Italian climber Sergio Dalla Longa has fallen to his death on Dhaulagiri.

It's a rash of accidents like these that makes you realize that mountaineering is still a very dangerous activity, and that the places we go can be very unforgiving. Keep the friends and familes of these fallen comrades in your thoughts this week, and keep your fingers crossed that they are the last fatalties we'll have to report on for a good long while.

It was definitely unintentional to come to Fresh Station yet again. But a group of us needed a relaxing dinner that didn't require much effort, and this place was within easy reach on a Friday night. We got a different set than what we got last time though. And I have to confess that this place is really growing on me now, especially after seeing them use a blowtorch to melt tuna belly fat and let it drip onto bara chiraishi.

I rented an apartment in Buenos Aires so I could get the feel for living here. Every morning I prepare breakfast, pretty much the same stuff I have in L.A. I go shopping at a supermarket, Disco, and at small vegetable stores. Today I had half a white melon, very much like a honeydew, stuffed with blueberries, strawberries, pecans, lemon juice. I also prepare my own lunches. Dinners find me going out to try Argentine restaurants. When I get home I'll do a whole story on the health food scene and on the vegetarian restaurants I found-- and I´m pretty sure I've found 'em all. But today I want to write up a review of a haute cuisine restaurant my favorite concierge suggested. It's new and not in any of the guide books yet.

In fact, the whole area isn't in any of the guide books yet. The restaurant is called Chila and the area is Puerta Madera. It is the newly gentrified docks region and, man is it ever gentrified! No old word charm here, except there were two three-mast naval schooners docked along the bank and a full navy band playing a concert. The area looks real snazzy and upscale and with a grotesque combination of TGI Friday and Hooters on one side of the river and glistening highrises, complements of ABN-AMRO, Hilton, Nextel, LG, and lots of construction cranes dominating the other side, it's just the kind of area I'd steer clear of. But then I would have missed Chila.

The concierge had helped me trick the rotten Brazilians out of a visa and I wanted to celebrate with a wonderful dining experience. She said she had just eaten at Chila and that it was brand new and a secret that no one knew about yet. She said it would be empty. It was. Lucky me.

The Argentine dining scene, beyound the empañadas and parrillas is pretty sophisticated. And there are nouvelle Argentine restaurants everywhere. Chila's chef is preparing bold and exciting meals, combining delcious and unique, if not traditional, flavors. The waiter suggested a cold avocado cream with shrimps sauted in cayenne pepper. It was completely delicious and I would have liked three of them. So much for the old canard that you can't get any spicy food in Buenos Aires. As a main course I had a Sole farcí. It was stuffed with mushrooms and shrimps and in a lime juice and coconut milk sauce; served with a simple green salad. I'm glad it was a couple of miles from my apartment because I needed the nice long walk to help digest such rich food.

The restaurant is impeccably designed and would get highest grades from Zagat in the decor and service categories, two things I never care about. (I'm just in it for the food.) I do care about prices though, and here they are great-- at least for Americans. The meal cost me 75 pesos ($25) and it would have been a $75 meal in NY or L.A. Exchange rates used to work that way for Americans in Europe too. Now they work against us in the same way in Europe. Here, as long as you go to places specifically catering to locals, your dollar stretches triple.

Seville has been one of my favorite places in Spain since I started visiting that country in the late 60s. Except for the times that I was strictly on business in Madrid or on a short vacation in Barcelona or Ibiza (while I was living in Holland), I always went out of my way to include Sevilla in my itinerary. The capital of Andalusia has a unique and beautiful ambiance that very clearly marks it as special and alluring. In December we took a train to warm and sunny Sevilla (and Cordoba) on the way from chilly Madrid to Morocco. The express from Cordoba takes 45 minutes.

I had decided to make the big hotel splurge for this trip Sevilla's Alfonso XIII, a hotel that was built specifically (in 1928) to be the grandest and most luxurious hotel in Europe. Nearly 80 years later and it still is truly awesome.
Sometimes it seems as though all the grandest sights of Sevilla were placed around the hotel-- from the beautiful Guadalquivir River to the Cathedral (the world's biggest gothic structure and the 3rd largest church in Europe) to the breathtaking 14th century Alcazar, Europe's oldest royal residence still in use. The rack rates are prohibitive (starting at around $500 for a double) but the Alfonso is a Westin Hotel and my old corporate travel agent was able to work wonders with a great discount and a spectacular upgrade. Everything about the hotel bespeaks value for your money, something I like. I mean it went beyond the most beautifully and luxuriously appointed rooms of the whole trip; the Alfonso even has the best, most professional, knowledgeable and empathetic concierge we ran into on the trip.

Everywhere you look within walking distance from the Alfonso is just spectacular. We ate up the tourist sites like the Cathedral and especially the Alcazar and loved walking around the Barrio de Santa Cruz (the old Jewish ghetto that is now a charming, vibrant functioning medieval town within the city). If you want the best in Seville, there is no other choice besides the Alfonso. Restaurant-wise, on the other hand, you have a lot of great choices-- chefs that are serious about catering to regular clients, not thinking about how to feed transients. On a couple of past trips I had tried the Egana Oriza, probably Sevilla's best eatery, and loved it but this time we decided to decided to give a less well-known place a shot. The Poncio (Calle Victoria 8 in the Triana District) is on the other side of the river and a bit of a trek by foot-- but that's partly why we chose it. Both of us love walking around cities and feeling the pulse of daily life.

The chef, Willy Moya, came to our table and we talked for a while about what we wanted in a general sense and he was able to recommend an incredible dinner for each of us. He's an inventive and brilliant chef and this was one of our best meals in Spain. Roland is still raving about some wild baked ice cream and olive oil concoction he scarfed down and was swearing he had just had the best wine in his life (although he tended to say that about every meal). I was pretty surprised that the cost was about half of what a meal like that is in a comparable Madrid restaurant.

The main bus stop is walking distance from the Alfonso and we took the bus to Algeciras to catch the ferry to Tangier. It was all easy to arrange and completely hassle-free.

When we first walked up to this place (9 Raffles Boulevard #01-11/12/13, 6338-8583), we were a bit concerned, as they seemed to be doing much more business selling after-work drinks than they were selling food. And after having eaten there, I can see why: the food was kinda gross, with the mapo doufu lacking heat and the chuanr lacking spices. Sure, the decor was unique, and the dumplings were still half-edible, but I'd rather just go to Chinatown for this stuff.

Yesterday it was reported that several climbers were making a speed attempt on the summit of Dhaulagiri, and the word today is that they were successful. MountEverest.net is reporting that Iñaki Ochoa and Jorge Egocheaga have topped out on the mountain.

Ochoa arrived at the summit at approximately 3 PM yesterday with his partner Egocheaga about 30 mintues behind. The Spaniards arrived at the top just 24 hours after leaving BC, an impressively fast climb to say the least. For Ochoa, this is his 12th 8000m peak, leaving him with just Kangchenjunga and Annapurna to go on completing the list. Congratulations and great work guys!

In other Himalaya news, the Spanish team on Annapurna has retreated to base camp following a fresh round of snow. Some of the team members are feeling under the weather, and it doesn't look like a summit window will open in the next few days. On Shisha Pangma, Andrew Lock is reporting that the summit push is on now that a the weather has cleard up some. And finally, on Cho Oyu, the Italians are setting off for C2 today with the hopes of improving their acclimatization efforts. The report is that the mornings are clear and beautiful, but the afternoons have continued to bring snow.

Photo © Jon Bertelli -All Rights Reserved
Jon Bertelli is an international photographer, who currently resides in Vancouver, British Columbia, but was raised in Florence and academically trained in the visual arts there and in Oslo.

He lived in Mexico in the late nineties, and documented the last surviving Zapatista fighters; the veterans of the 1910-20 Mexican Revolution of the South, led by the famed (and feared) Emiliano Zapata. While Pancho Villa's revolution was concentrated in the north of the country, Zapata and his insurgents represented the south.

Jon photographed the surviving insurgents; most of which were over 100 years old. These were idealistic men and women who sacrificed their well-being and lives to follow Zapata. Many were decorated as war heroes by the Mexican government, and some have been recognized internationally for their bravery.

You have the choice of seeing Jon's The Last of the Zapatistas on his website, or on FOTO8 where his portraits have been made into an audio-sideshow.

The audio track used is La Soldadera by Garcia-Pujol and Jimenez. While it's a beautiful and appropriately evocative piece, imagine if the audio of the elderly Zapatistas' voices, telling us a bit of their exploits, was also included!!

MountEverest.net is reporting that Maxut Zhumayev & Vassily Pivtsov have topped out on Everest! This is the first summit of the season on Everest, and it was accomplished with out supplemental oxygen or Sherpa support as well. The pair left their high camp, at 7900m last night around 10 PM and radioed back to ABC at about 6 PM Chinese time from the summit.

The pair first attempted to reach the summit last week, but were turned back due to poor weather conditions. They returned to ABC on Friday, but launched another bid on Saturday. The two Kazakhs climb in alpine style, carrying all their necessary gear with them, and not using established camps. The report is that they reached the top just as HiMex's Sherpa team were laying down the last of the fixed ropes to the summit.

Currently they are descending the mountain on those ropes and will camp tonight above 8000m. Weather conditions are said to be good, with no high winds. Congratulations guys! What an amazing climb! I can't wait to hear more about it.

In other Summit news, word has come in that Denis Urubko is making a speed summit push tonight on Dhaulagiri as well. Denis is hoping to set a new summit speed record by beating the old time of 17 hours 15 minutes set back in 1995. Good luck Denis. We'll want to hear about your climb as well!

Update: Alan Arnette is now reporting that 5 Sherpas from the HiMex team actually summitted about a half-hour ahead of Maxut and Vassily. The Sherpa team was up near the summit setting fixed ropes and upon completion of that task, felt like continuing higher. This means that all the fixed ropes are now in place on the North side, and the way is clear, weather permitting, for teams to start to make their push. Alan notes that this is the exact same date that the Sherpas finished the task last year as well. Rumor has it the Olympic Torch practice run may go for the summit before weeks end.

Having lost patience with Amazon's delivery system, and the fact that its delivery was now estimated to be between June 1 and June 14, I called yesterday and canceled my order. The customer service lady was extremely pleasant and nice, making me feel somewhat guilty for a while.

My guilt didn't last too long after I saw that Adorama had a Panasonic GF1 with a 20mm/F1.7 for $847 excluding NYC tax, but including some stuff like an 8 GB SD Sandisk memory card, a Lowepro carrying case (I much prefer my own pouches), a wonderful USB 2.0 SD card reader (like a memory stick), and a cleaning kit (of dubious use except for a nice lens brush).

I walked over to the store, got served by a lovely young woman (inexplicably wearing a scarf in NYC's heat) and had my new camera and accessories in under 10 minutes.

As with every camera and electronic gadgets I buy, I tried to work through the controls and settings without opening the manual. I got reasonably far, and was stumped a number of times, especially as I am used to a Canon "nomenclature". So I'll have to spend some time studying the manual after all.

I will soon test the GF1 and will post some of the street shots here. However, my first impressions holding it, shooting a few interior shots and so forth, gave me a sense that it's a solidly-built small camera. Not a point & shoot, not a rangefinder...but a hybrid in between the two.

Everest isn't the only place where the action is this weekend. While teams on the Big Hill jockey for position and hope the good weather window stays open for a few more days, MountEerest.net is also reporting that the teams on Annapurna are also getting ready for their summit push.

There are two teams on the North side that are getting ready to leave BC and head up. The fixed ropes are in place and high camps are established, so now there is nothing left to do but head up to the summit. These teams include Iñaki Ochoa and Edurne Pasaban The weather isn't great at the moment however, with deep snow on the higher points of the mountain, and rain in BC. Anyone familiar with Annapurna knows that it's prone to avalanches, so lets hope those snows at higher elevation stay in place for these teams to make their run.

Teams have left Dhaulagiri after a rough season on the mountain that saw two climbers killed in their tent when an avalanche struck. Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner can't help but wonder how she managed to survive. She had to dig herself out of her tent, which was buried in snow as well, and she could have easily been swept off the mountain too. The rest of her climb was no piece of cake either. On her previous summit bid, she had to retreat in order to see her climbing partner, who got very sick, safely back to BC.

News from other Himalaya summit include a summit push by Ralf's Amical Team on Manaslu, a summit on Cho Oyu by the Kazakh team, and Italians Diego Giovannini and Massimiliano Gasperetti on Nuptse attempting to put up a new route.

With the advent of tiny POV cameras over the past few years, adventure filmmaking has gone from an expensive, time consuming proposition to something that anyone with a laptop and a good camera can do. This week, aspiring filmmakers got a couple of new options to help in this process in the form of a new camera and an improved drone for capturing arial footage like never before.

First up, ION released their new Air Pro 3 WiFi camera, which brings an assortment of upgrades and improvements to the device. The new device has an improved 12 megapixel sensor that increases performance in lowlight conditions while continuing to shoot in full 1080p resolutions at 60 fps. Its ruggedized body is waterproof down to 49 feet (15 meters) and includes built-in image stabilization to help minimize shaking when worn on a helmet or mounted on the handlebars of a bike. It has a battery life of about 2.5 hours, which is a solid amount of time for a camera this small and an array of new mounting options are available to make this camera as versatile as possible. 

Additionally, the Air Pro 3's WiFi functionality makes it easier than ever to share videos online. The system even comes with 8GB of free cloud storage and can be paired with an app on an iOS or Android device for remote operation. 

The camera carries a price tag of $349.99 and begins shipping November 15. Preorders are available online.

Adventure filmmakers who want to add a new dimension to their next project will love the new offering from DJI, makers of the Phantom remote controlled drone systems. They've introduced the Phantom 2 Vision, which is unique in that it comes equipped with a camera right out of the box. Unlike previous models from DJI, the Vision has a built-in 14 megapixel camera that comes mounted on a tilting gimbal that can rotate 60º and has a wide 140º viewing area. A shock-aborbing bracket, built specifically for this camera, helps to reduce shaking and jitters that were an issue when  mountain your own camera on previous Phantom drones. The camera can also be paired with an iOS or Android device, allowing it to become a remote screen for the device, which the pilot can then use on the ground to see exactly what footage is being captured. 

DJI also improved the drone itself, giving it a greater battery life. It can now stay aloft for 25 minutes at a time. The drone also has improved stabilization for easier flight, even for beginners, although it all comes at a hefty cost. The Phantom 2 Vision will set you back $1199 when it goes on sale in a few weeks. The original Phantom, sans camera, is still available for just $479. 

Check out the Vision in action in the video below. Is it wrong that I kind of want one of these things?