David Roberts

Este archivo solo abarca los artículos del autor incorporados a este sitio a partir del 1 de diciembre de 2006. Para fechas anteriores realice una búsqueda entrecomillando su nombre.

Borge Ousland, 33, of Norway at the South Pole in 1996. Credit Ketil Soyland/Associated Press

Last week, after a marathon closing dash of 77.5 miles during 32 sleepless hours, the American Colin O’Brady stormed to the finish line at the foot of the Leverett Glacier to claim the first solo, unsupported traverse of Antarctica — a challenge Mr. O’Brady had called The Impossible First. Two days later, culminating a rivalry that commentators likened to the race between Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen to reach the South Pole in 1911-12, Louis Rudd of Britain finished the same arduous journey of more than 920 miles across the frozen continent, surviving brutal winds, whiteouts, crevasse scares and temperatures below minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit.…  Seguir leyendo »

The Mekong River runs more than 4,000 kilometers, from China into Myanmar and then through Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, where it empties into the sea. Traditionally a major transport route and food source, it is also increasingly becoming a supply of energy — at its own peril and at the cost of instability among states in the region.

Several large dams already straddle the Mekong in China, and construction on more dams downstream is underway. Hydropower is a well-established source of renewable energy, and the countries of the lower Mekong see it as an attractive way to help meet their exploding energy demand while diversifying their energy portfolio.…  Seguir leyendo »

Aterradoras historias sobre la niebla migrante en Indonesia, el smog posterior al Diwali en el norte de India, y el regreso de las tormentas de smog, también llamadas “airpocalypse” en China relatan las más recientes calamidades relacionadas a la contaminación en el Asia. La contaminación atmosférica por partículas contaminantes, que es un hecho que no se confina solamente al Asia, causa la pérdida de más de 3,1 millones de vida en todo el mundo cada año; esta cifra quintuplica la de las  muertes por malaria y representa una tasa de mortalidad un poco menor al doble de la actual tasa de mortalidad por el SIDA.…  Seguir leyendo »

IN 1955, the great Italian climber Walter Bonatti became trapped by storms on the fifth day of a solo climb on the Petit Dru in the French Alps. He had traversed so far in one direction that he’d cut off all possibility of retreat. A blank wall rose above him. He was beyond rescue and knew it. So he fashioned an escape that has never been duplicated in mountaineering.

Mr. Bonatti tied three loops in his rope and attached a carabiner to each. Then he swung the rope up the cliff like a gaucho slinging a bolo. On the 12th throw, a carabiner snagged in an invisible crack 40 feet above, but a slight tug popped it loose.…  Seguir leyendo »