Setting out to name America’s top-ten crags is a dubious goal. For starters, you just know that somebody is going to get all huffy puffy when their stomping ground doesn’t make the cut. And then there will be the wars over semantics. What qualifies as a crag? What doesn’t? How important is history, aesthetics, rock quality? No matter what, you’re bound to piss people off.
Still, you might as well try. Because YOLO.
For the purpose of this article, I am setting down some ground rules.
By crag, I mean an area used predominantly for single-pitch or Grade I–II routes. You know, the kind of multipitch where you don’t bring a water bottle. That means that even though Alex Honnold can climb El Cap in a cool two hours, for most of us, places like Yosemite, Zion, and Red Rocks are out.
By cragging, I mean not bouldering.
The past matters. There’s something special about climbing at an area steeped in legend and lore. Places with long and storied histories get an extra nod.
Ambiance matters, too. That includes crowds, proximity to roads, and views.
Rock quality is paramount.
The only other rule you need to know is that this list is inarguable and definitive, and that anyone who disagrees with it, or me, is wrong.
10. The Shawangunks, New York
(Jarek Tuszyński/Wikimedia Commo)
The ’Gunks is the seminal crag for the Northeast. For trad climbing under 5.10, it may be the best destination in the country, if not the world. The carriage road can be packed with gawkers, and popular areas such as the High Exposure buttress can get clogged with hordes of pseudo gumbies trying desperately to place all ten of their pink tricams. But the views of the Catskills will soothe the ire of even the crustiest dirtbag, and if you find yourself in the rarefied air above the 5.10 benchmark, you’ll find far fewer people in line for the routes. Even if you do have to wait in line for a classic moderate, I promise it’s worth it. Where else can you do 15-foot horizontal boulder problems above your pro and still call it 5.6? Add to that impeccable rock quality and a climbing history that dates back to the late 1930s, when European immigrants Fritz Weissner and Hans Krauss brought mountaineering skills gleaned from their homelands to bear on the steep white cliffs, and you have a bona fide worldwide destination.
Eldo, as it’s known, may be a contender for the best worst crag in America. Located a stone’s throw from the climbing crucible of Boulder, Colorado—though we won’t hold that against it— Eldo’s towering walls of red sandstone are truly a climber’s dream. Some of America’s finest climbers cut their teeth here, most notably the infamous and prolific first ascensionist Layton Kor. The rock in Eldo is often friable, and the protection is commonly marginal, but what makes Eldo so great is the sheer volume of climbable rock. Almost anywhere you look, you’re likely to find holds. It may be hard, it may be runout, the gear might be difficult to place (not to mention trust), but the climbing is fun, the approaches are short, and the setting is gorgeous. Such infamous classics as the Naked Edge, Rosy Crucifixion, Ruper, and the Bastille originally put Eldo on the map for American climbers. But it’s the countless variations and linkups one can achieve with a little bit of creativity that truly cements Eldo as a top-ten crag.
8. Smith Rock, Oregon
(allisoncolwell/Pixabay)
When French climbing ace J.B. Tribout came to check out the sport climbing in the United States in 1992, he went to Smith Rock. And when he managed to pull off Just Do It at 5.14c, it stood as America’s hardest route for a solid five years. But Smith Rock and its cadre of pioneers had already earned a well-deserved reputation in the annals of climbing history by the time Tribout got there. The tall, steep fins of conglomerated volcanic rock lend themselves to intricate, technical climbing in the 5.12-to-5.14+ range. And the 400-foot Monkey Face pillar has got to be one of the most iconic monoliths in American climbing. As if all of that weren’t enough, the climbing gods saw fit to bequeath unto otherwise rock-deprived Oregonians a lovely river full of trout and otters, a lower gorge full of basalt cracks and compression arêtes, and a convenient campground that’s walking distance from the climbing to boot. Beautiful, delicate, and climbable for three seasons, Smith Rock is, as I believe Tribout said, magnifique!
Speaking of the French, wouldn’t it be great if the U.S. had one, just one, crag full of beautiful, clean, pocketed limestone à la Buoux or the Verdon? Oh wait, there is. Wild Iris is a crag as pretty as its name. Smooth-rolling buttresses of limestone waves cresting atop hills of flaxen grass and aromatic wildflowers—what’s not to love? Rattlesnakes, maybe, and it can get crowded during busy summer weekends. But Wild Iris is really quite a bit more extensive than the Main Wall upon which “greenies” (the name bequeathed by locals to the ubiquitous visitors from Colorado) flog themselves ad nauseam. Locals in Lander might slip rattlesnake venom into my next whiskey if I say the names of the other areas, but they’re out there. The camping is great, many of the routes were established by the legendary Todd Skinner, and most importantly, the routes have that certain ineffable quality that all fine limestone retains. Athletic, bouldery, and yet subtly tenuous sequences are the name of the game. For pure quality sport climbing, there are few places better in the States.
6. Joshua Tree, California
(Jarek Tuszyński/Wikimedia Commo)
Picture rocks stacked upon rocks. Piles of house- and apartment-building-size rocks. Rocks with cracks, rocks with patina, rocks with caves in them, rocks with huecos. The only thing more ubiquitous in J Tree than the eponymous cacti of Seussical proportions is rock. There are rocks with roofs, rocks with slabs, rocks with bolts, and rocks without bolts. Rocks that were climbed by such golden-age demigods as John Bachar and John Long back when swami belts were de rigueur, and the answer to “Who wears short shorts?” was, apparently, climbers. It would take many lifetimes to climb to the top of all the rocks within the national park’s boundary. And if you ever did, you could just hike a little further and climb the ones outside it, too.
5. The Needles, California
(Steph Abegg)
I add this to the list at the risk of angry locals defecating in my haul bag and slashing my tires the next time I find myself in the neighborhood. I do so because it would be criminal not to. From Lake Tahoe down to Joshua Tree, arguably the finest collection of granite in the world spills down the spine of the Sierra Nevada. And in all of that range, there is no lode of stone finer than that of the Needles. Remember in the rules when I said that rock quality was paramount? Well, you could toss the Needles into the middle of noisy and smog-infested Los Angeles, and I’d still put it on this list. The rock quality is simply without compare. A true trad-climber’s crag, the Needles is not for the recently initiated gym climber, which may be part of what keeps the masses at bay. It’s not exactly a secret anymore, but it’s still fairly quiet. And unless Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi make a top-grossing documentary about Bob Kamps and Herb Laeger’s mind-melting yet obscure first ascent of Spook Book back in 1978, I’m pretty sure most visiting climbers to California will still eschew the Needles for Yosemite.
4. Red River Gorge, Kentucky
(Jarek Tuszyński/Wikimedia Commons)
God must be a climber. I mean, just look at the Red River Gorge. Here’s a place that was clearly created by a benevolent being with a giant ice cream scoop. The walls of the RRG feature jaw-dropping cirques of multicolored sandstone that look like an inverted stand of bleachers. But the geology of the gorge is not just staggering on a macro level. Seemingly every square inch of those enormous walls is covered in pockets, crimps, iron rails, jugs, slopers, and climbable features of nearly every variety. When it comes to sheer abundance of quality routes, the RRG is probably America’s only legitimate sport-climbing answer to world-class zones such as France’s Céüse, Spain’s Siurana, or Greece’s Kalymnos. But it’s not just limited to sport climbs—the gorge is home to a plethora of fantastic cracks and traditionally protected routes as well. On top of all that, the RRG is really beautiful, particularly in autumn when the leaves change. I’d say the RRG is America’s best climbing area… if it weren’t for the next three crags on this list.
3. New River Gorge, West Virginia
(David Mark/Pixabay)
To the chagrin and outrage of Kentuckians, I am throwing the NRG on this list in the number-three spot. Why does the bronze medal for American crags go to the New River Gorge instead of the Red? For a few simple reasons: First, everybody and their mom talks about the Red, while the New maintains a much sleepier vibe, making it inherently radder. Second, the Red is so riddled with huge holds that you can climb darn near your limit in your approach shoes (footwork be damned), while the New features spare, devious, aesthetic lines that require not only superb footwork but also sequence-reading skill. And third, the stone at the Red is really good, but the NRG’s Nuttall sandstone is 98 percent quartzite and harder than granite, making it as good as rock can possibly be for climbing. Mango Tango and Proper Soul are two of the prettiest sport climbs in the Western Hemisphere, while Endless Wall may be the best continuous section of cliff in the States. There’s probably only one place in the world (OK, in America) with better stone than the New River Gorge. And that place is definitely not number two on the list.
2. Indian Creek, Utah
(allisoncolwell/pixabay)
The Creek has a lot working against it: Wingate sandstone is softer than a baby’s bottom, making for horrifying face climbing (not that that matters, since only about 0.00001 percent of routes at the Creek feature face holds at all); if you don’t tape up, you’re going to bleed; if you do tape up, some grizzled old guy is going to hiss at you; all grade objectivity is out the window, since it all depends on the size of your appendages and digits; the climbing hurts; splitters are boring, since you just do the same move over and over for 100 to 200 feet; and every route requires 20 pounds and approximately $5,000 worth of gear. Pretty lame, when you put it that way.
What Indian Creek has going for it, though, is that it’s unique in the world. There is literally nowhere else like it. If you want to learn to crack climb, there’s no better resource on the planet. And once you do learn the dark art of crack climbing, there’s nowhere better to test your mettle. The climbing’s really quite fun (once you kill the nerve endings on the back of your hands). It can even be pretty cerebral if you branch out from the plain-Jane splitters. But what really makes the Creek the number-two crag on this list is simply how beautiful it is there. The desert has a way of taking you in, holding you, making you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. You can (and many people do) spend weeks in the Creek just wasting time, not climbing at all.
1. Index, Washington State
(Steph Abegg)
And let the social-media shitstorm begin. Oh, trust me, I know what’s coming. I’m going to get it from all sides: From folks who have never heard about Index and can’t believe what they’re seeing. From Index locals who are convinced I’m ruining all that is sacred by giving away their secret paradise. From people who went to Index and got shut down by the stiff grades. From people who think the season is too short, the moss too thick, and the car break-ins too common. Will anybody be happy about this choice?
The problem is, Index is, objectively, the best crag in the United States. Honestly, it’s probably the best crag in the world. Imagine the texture of New River Gorge sandstone layered over a smattering of 100-to-800-foot-tall walls of perfect, featured, spectacular granite. Index literally has it all. Sport, trad, and aid, single pitch and multipitch, cracks and faces, knobs and pockets, patina, edges, jugs, slopers, and tufas, corners and arêtes, slabs and overhangs, roofs and ledges. The whole nine yards and then some. There is nowhere else in the world with as dense a concentration of four-star climbs. The Skykomish Valley is jaw-droppingly beautiful. And the sandbag, oh, the sandbag! I’ll say this much: nobody goes to Index to pad their resume. You can straight-up forget about grades there since 5.11 on the IndexDecimal System covers everything from 5.11a to 5.13c on the more commonly used Yosemite Decimal System.
The best thing about Index is how few people get it. This article will do nothing to change that. The cat has been out of the bag, so to speak, for decades now, but climbers visiting the Pacific Northwest still fall for the tried-and-true traps of Smith Rock and Squamish again and again. What protects Index is the shroud of hyperbole that surrounds it. The harder Index aficionados like myself spray, the better. It just makes our opinions easier to discount and, ultimately, discard. And that’s fine, because it will keep Index nice and quiet.
Over the last several months, the World Heritage Centre has been receiving numerous messages from citizens from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as well as from other countries, expressing their concern regarding the ‘Proposed Scheme’ for the A303 Amesbury to Berwick Down project, located within the boundaries of the World Heritage site “Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites”, and the adverse impact it may have on the landscape, archaeological remains, hydrogeology and ecology of the site.
The World Heritage Centre wishes to thank you for your emails and interest in the protection of this World Heritage site, and we wish to reassure you that the competent authorities of the State Party of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as well as the Advisory Bodies to the World Heritage Convention (ICOMOS) and the World Heritage Centre are fully informed of the concerns raised by the citizens’ campaign. The state of conservation of the property is being monitored by all parties in accordance with the Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention.
The State Party has advised that it will manage the timing of the consent and other statutory processes for the A303 trunk road project to take into account Committee Decisions and to ensure that the World Heritage Centre, ICOMOS and the Committee can continue to contribute to the evaluation and decision-making processes at appropriate stages of the project.
In early 2018, a joint World Heritage Centre/ICOMOS Advisory Mission to the site took place at the request of the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This mission report is available on the website for public access: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/373/documents/
In the summer of 2018, the World Heritage Committee, during its 42nd session in Manama, Bahrain (24 June-4 July), has examined the state of conservation of this property. As it is stated in the latest Committee Decision available online, the World Heritage Committee has requested the State Party to submit to the World Heritage Centre an updated report on the state of conservation of the World Heritage property “Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites" for examination at its 43rd session in 2019.
Malaysia Airlines is rolling out a new Japanese menu developed in partnership with the Hilton Kuala Lumpur’s Iketeru restaurant on its flights from Kuala Lumpur to Tokyo and Osaka next month.
The new menus, developed by the restaurant’s executive chef, Masami Okamoto, will be offered to passengers flying in the airline’s Business Suite and business class cabins for a limited time over the summer months running from June 1 until August 31.
The menus won’t be the same for passengers on all flights, however, owing to the different schedules of the flights.
Passengers on Malaysia Airlines’ MH88 flight from Kuala Lumpur to Tokyo, for instance, will be served a breakfast menu comprising seasonal fruits, nimono (a simmered dish with soy sauce, stock and sake), zensai (appetiser) – pictured above – and a main course of salt-grilled salmon shioyaki and unagi tamagoyaki (eel omelette roll) – pictured below.
Florence is banning tourists from picnicking on the sidewalk and on shop doorsteps at mealtimes. Those who don’t comply with the ordinance, signed by mayor Dario Nardella, in effect from September 4 until January 6, 2019, face a fine of between €150-€500.
The ban applies to four streets in the city center that are especially popular with tourists: via de’ Neri, the Uffizi square, piazza del Grano and via della Ninna. Here, between 12 and 3 pm and between 6 and 10 pm, it is forbidden to consume food while lingering on sidewalks, and on shop, restaurant and home doorsteps, which tourists often resort to do as public benches are scarce in the city center.
The aim of the ordinance is to maintain “decorum and the livability of the area.” The ordinance describes how, especially during summer time - high season - tourists have taken the habit of stopping outside the numerous take away shops, invading the sidewalks, to eat their snacks. The situation is especially detrimental, says the ordinance, considering it takes place in a Unesco-inscribed area with high historic and artistic value.
Local businesses have long complained of the situation, which got to a steamy point in August, when a shopkeeper got into a scuffle with a Spanish family camped out on the shop’s front step.
Shopkeepers will have to put up the sign provided by the city, which explains the ordinance, in Italian and English, and display it so that it’s clearly visible.
This is just the latest in a series of measures aimed at controlling the effects of disorderly mass tourism. Last summer, the mayor proposed to hose the steps of churches at lunch time to discourage tourists from sitting on them.
Orkney’s archaeology is endlessly fascinating. This far-flung archipelago is home to structures that are 5,000 years old, like Cuween Hill Chambered Cairn, and mostly hidden beneath tons of verdant grass and weighty sod.
So many questions arise. What was life like here in 3,000 BC? Why are there so many ancient structures preserved here and not elsewhere? What is the significance of these sites’ orientation to major astronomical events like the solstices and equinoxes? There are no easy answers, but each ancient site found, excavated, and studied locks in another piece of the puzzle.
I’ve spent quite a bit of time on Orkney as a visitor over the last decade, often staying in crofts between Kirkwall and Stromness, and I’d somehow missed a quirky little cairn right on my doorstep: Cuween Hill Chambered Cairn.
The chambered cairn at Cuween is one of those Orcadian sites with informational boards and a few signs, but little else: No ticket office, no on-site guide or docent, no barriers to immersing yourself in ancient history. It says a lot about my worldview, but I find it incredible that places like this exist in the world unmolested. I tip my hat to all you respectful Orcadians and visitors.
Cuween Hill stands up a small road just off the main Kirkwall-Finston path, and the cairn is cut into the bedrock, situated at the top of one of the Mainland’s higher points with views over the Bay of Firth to Orkney’s northern isles. The name ‘Cuween’ is a recent corruption of older names stemming from Old Norse, which meant ‘cattle pasture.’ A neolithic farming settlement dubbed Stonehall once existed in the valley below Cuween Hill, and the current belief is that the cairn was used for the burial of the settlement’s high status individuals.
The Cuween Hill cairn was probably rediscovered in the 19th century by romantics ill-equipped to access such an ancient structure without doing damage. The proof is usually in the roof, for these same tomb raiders damaged the cairn’s original roof, which must have been quite high as the replacement still stands over two meters tall inside the cairn. Official excavation of the cairn began in 1901, and they found the cairn carefully sealed, which could mean the community stopped using it or simply sealed it in between uses. We don’t know.
Cuween Hill’s chambered cairn is essentially a miniature version of the famous Maeshowe, which is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site the Heart of Neolithic Orkney, with small chambers leading off a main room. Inside the cairn excavators found the remains of at least eight humans and 24 dog skulls. The reasoning behind the burial of dog skulls is left to the world of theory and imagination. Were the dogs guardians of the dead? Totem animals? Simply the favored pets of those interred? Again, we don’t know.
The passage leading into Cuween Hill’s chambered cairn is pitch black, low, and narrow. Maybe a little spooky, too. The day was wet and muddy and Sarah and I had the cairn to ourselves. A low wheeze seemed to emanate from that passage, as if the earthen mound was exhaling some pent-up spirits. It’s not hard to see why local people believe such mounds were the homes of fairies and trows. In fact, Cuween Hill is sometimes referred to as the Fairy Knowe for this reason.
The interior of Cuween Hill’s cairn was pitch black and ill-suited to photos, but we paused in the deathly silence and my mind wandered to what experiences were written into these incredibly ancient stones. There’s a different energy in such places, a subtle force pressing out of the darkness.
Cuween Hill exemplifies what I love about the Orkney Islands: Ancient places, respectfully excavated and maintained, and not kept at arms’ length. You are welcome to get near them. As tourism to Orkney increases this golden age might end — not everyone is so respectful of the ancient places of the earth.
RVs are fabulous because they include everything you need. But since RVs come equipped with so many features and luxuries, many people feel like they don’t really need to pack much.
This is 100% understandable, and even correct to an extent. However, there are some things my family likes to keep in our RV that many would deem redundant or unnecessary. That’s fine, to each their own, but let me assure you that we carefully consider each and every item we carry with us on our travels, and everything we keep, we keep for a good reason.
Take our ice chest for instance. Considering the fact that our trailer has a perfectly good refrigerator, using some of our limited space on an ice chest may seem like a silly move. I understand this and have even thought the same thing from time to time, but we always end up holding onto our cooler. Why? Because it’s super useful.
Here are some of the ways we make use of our ice chest. Maybe you’ll decide you could use one too!
1. Backup refrigerator
While RV refrigerators are perfectly fine in the vast majority of cases, there have been times when ours has stopped functioning properly. Simple things such as extreme heat or driving to high altitudes can have an effect on how well your fridge functions, meaning it’s always a good idea to have a backup plan. For us, this is the ice chest.
We’ve spent a week camping in Brooklyn, NY with no way to recharge our batteries, keeping our food cool in an ice chest. We also had to break out the ice chest in North Carolina when we drove high into the mountains. Finally, the ice chest came in super handy when a small part went out on our RV refrigerator and we needed to keep groceries cold until we could get a new one.
The point is, you never know when you’re going to need another option for keeping food cold, and a good ice chest that is close at hand is always helpful in these situations.
2. Reduced trips in and out
Sometimes when we are spending a day outdoors, we will also use the ice chest to reduce the number of trips we make in and out of the RV. We fill the chest with ice, beverages, and snacks, and keep our trailer door shut for the majority of the day. In return, we get a nice, cool, bug-free home-on-wheels at the end of the day.
3. Day trips
Of course, the ice chest also comes in handy for keeping food nice and chilly when we head out on long day trips. We can throw some leftover pizza or fried chicken into the chest along with some sides and a big bag of ice, and return to the truck at lunchtime for a delicious meal that we know is safe to eat.
In fact, the food stays cool for so long, we can even pack a dinner if we like, saving us money over the alternative of eating out.
4. Extra surface and storage
So far, every use we’ve mentioned has involved keeping food cool. Obviously, this is what ice chests are used for, and is what we use ours for much of the time. That said, there are other uses for a hard-sided cooler.
Often, our ice chest will be used as an extra outdoor surface to set things on, or for people to sit on when chairs are scarce. Sometimes we’ll even bring it inside to use as an additional surface to work on while cooking.
It also works nicely as a storage space, and will sometimes be used to hold our outdoor toys, shoes, or other items. That said, using it as storage means sanitizing before using it for food again, something you may want to keep in mind.
5. Emergency air conditioner
This final reason for keeping an ice chest around is not one we’ve tried yet. However, we certainly would do so, should the occasion arise.
Apparently, if you choose to purchase a special kind of ice chest, it will actually convert to a fairly effective A/C. The contraption only requires as much power as a fan, meaning it can be used while boondocking. Obviously, this is great news for those who enjoy boondocking, especially if they aren’t the kind of travelers who follow the weather.
That said, even if you don’t boondock regularly, you could find this option useful should your A/C go out or if you find yourself needing to save a bit on your electricity bill during the hot summer months.
As you can see, there are plenty of reasons to carry a quality ice chest with you on your travels. Not sure you can fit a traditional cooler in your rig? No worries! Collapsing ice chests such as this one work well for most things.
Developer Jeff Lamkin knew the risks when he paid $250 million for 63 acres of an island off the Texas coast. But he saw only upside in the quaint little beach town of Port Aransas.
Over the next 10 years he built Cinnamon Shore, a village of luxury vacation homes fortified by the latest hurricane-proof construction methods. Then Hurricane Harvey blasted ashore, leaving behind $125 billion of devastation along the Texas coast. It was the test every coastal investor dreads. But Cinnamon Shore passed with flying colors.
“To the left of us and to the right of us was total destruction,’’ Lamkin said. “But we had better construction, and so we just held up really well.’’
At a time when climate change is being linked to the rise of monster storms, Cinnamon Shore helps explain why real estate developers are still willing to thumb their nose at Mother Nature, with residential sales along the Gulf Coast increasing 60 percent over the last five years – almost twice the rate of the nation overall, according to Attom Data Solutions.
Panama City, Florida, ravaged by Hurricane Michael last month, is the latest example of the potential costs, yet developers like Lamkin still say it’s worth it.
Rising Investment
Vacation beach towns like Port Aransas and Panama City are increasingly dependent on new building methods to protect against catastrophic storms. As older structures get wiped out, they’re replaced by stronger construction that cushions against the next disaster, emboldening developers to keep investing. Buyers are on track to sink about $2 billion into Gulf Coast homes this year, based on the mean selling price, according to Attom Data. That would be up from $1.8 billion last year, and a 12-year high.
Developers aren’t deterred by rising insurance rates, which are largely passed along to buyers and renters, or by more expensive building requirements. Higher costs have simply “forced more expensive development” on the coast, said Charles Watson, a disaster modeler with Enki Research in Savannah, Georgia. Increasingly, coastal beach towns cater to the vacationers who can afford it.
A year into Port Aransas’ recovery from Harvey, Cinnamon Shore remains Lamkin’s most successful beachfront venture, with “solid returns on every level,’’ he said. This year will go down as the project’s best yet, with $40 million in sales for homes ranging from $750,000 to $3 million.
Starting Phase II
On Oct. 5 Lamkin’s Sea Oats Group broke ground on a second resort in Port Aransas — a $1.3 billion vacation community on 300 acres of sandy beachfront.
After last month’s Hurricane Michael, Florida’s storm-wrecked panhandle beach towns can look to Port Aransas for a glimpse of what their future might hold a year from now.
Chamber of Tourism president Jeff Hentz, 57, had only been in his job for eight months when Harvey blipped onto the radar screen and started heading for Texas. After a career bouncing between New York and Florida promoting destinations from Walt Disney World to Yosemite National Park, Port Aransas had seemed like the perfect place to settle down.
“Port A,’’ as he calls it, was an under-developed beach town within driving distance of 28 million Texans in the middle of a booming economy. Even Florida’s coast and New York’s Hamptons didn’t have that kind of consumer base.
Comeback Story
With South Texas’ warm winters, Hentz envisioned a year-around destination where vacationers could escape to a more authentic, laid-back beach vibe. Sports tournaments, business conferences and festivals could fill the gaps. Once he saturated the Texas market, he could reach out internationally to Australia and Asia.
When Hurricane Harvey zeroed in, demolishing homes, restaurants, businesses and even Hentz’s own office, it washed away all those plans — at least temporarily. Hentz shifted his attention to raising $2.5 million in public and private funds to speed the rebuilding of Port A. He quickly formed a new plan:
“This is going to be the greatest comeback story of all time,” he resolved.
It seemed unlikely at the time. Town residents who fled before the storm returned to eerily quiet streets. The air was heavy with the stink of seaweed and saltwater. Boats from the harbor had been tossed around like toys. Palm trees were bent in half and cemetery gravestones broken. Even structures that remained standing had to be gutted, with debris piling up into a four-story high heap locals called Mount Harvey.
Monster Storm
Mayor Charles Bujan, 74, had been through several hurricanes during his lifetime. He remembered Carla in 1961 and Camille in 1969. But it’s Harvey that brings tears to his eyes. He estimates the storm wrought as much as $1 billion in damages to the small island.
“This one was a monster,” he said, leaning back in the office chair where he slept during the weeks after the storm hit.
Bujan surrounds himself now with storm memorabilia. A hand-drawn map of Harvey’s path hangs on the wall. A scrap of paper is taped to his clock recording Harvey’s landfall: “8/26/17, time 0307.”
And on his desk sits a wooden carving of the word “strong” — the way Port A sees itself now. Amid the devastation, residents found an opportunity. Many buildings were destroyed, but they’ve been rebuilt stronger to help withstand future storms.
Making Improvements
The RV campground Bujan operates was trashed, which he says gave him the chance to make improvements he’d long been wanting.
After the storm, local business owner Bron Doyle rebuilt his karaoke stage and concession stands and refurbished his fleet of rental golf carts. The whole town is getting an upgrade, he said. “A lot of things that got destroyed are better.”
The idea of recovery was daunting at first. Tracy Ellwood, a 53-year-old manager at Moby Dick’s restaurant, said her friends and family rely on local businesses for their livelihood. “The sooner you fix things and get going, the sooner everybody can get back to work and start to live again,” she said.
Hentz is still working out of a 60-by-24-foot trailer, but his ideas are back on track. Even with just half of the town’s 4,000 hotel rooms and vacation rentals re-opened, Port Aransas recorded 3.5 million visitors so far this year, down from 4.5 million the year before. Next year, he’s targeting a new convention center followed by a sports complex, launching the town past 10 million visitors by 2025.
Proof of Concept
The Palmilla Beach Resort, started by San Antonio billionaire Red McCombs in 2014, is again filled with vacationers. Its newly established neighbor Sunflower Beach Resort, remains on track for development with no visible scars from the storm.
Two miles away at Cinnamon Shore, sales started picking back up just six weeks after the storm, Lamkin said. For the 140 structures that weathered the storm, only 20 suffered enough damage for homeowners to even file insurance claims.
For Lamkin, Hurricane Harvey was a proof of concept: that with the right building techniques — like doors and windows that can sustain 130 miles-per-hour winds, steel rods and straps that tie down the roof, and base floors elevated above flood levels — it’s possible to invest profitably in coastal real estate.
Before Harvey, he says, he believed in the hurricane construction codes in theory. “But now I really believe in them.”
This article was written by Natasha Rausch from Bloomberg and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to [email protected].
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Photo Credit: Port Aransas Chamber of Tourism President Jeffrey Hentz. He is focused on continued recovery and development after Hurricane Harvey. Eddie Seal / Bloomberg
Ten moose have been fitted with radio collars to help researchers more about their behavior/Seth Moore, director of Biology and Environment, Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa
How moose at Isle Royale National Park react to the recent influx of wolves could be relatively easy to monitor now that some of the ungulates have been fitted with radio collars.
The collars were placed on 10 cow moose in mid-February by a team from the National Park Service, University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine, Michigan Technological University, and Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. The researchers hope the collars will make it easier to assess population health, effects of herbivory, and impacts of predator restoration to the ecosystem.
“This is the beginning of a novel effort to compare numerous aspects of ecology and the health of the moose population between Isle Royale National Park and the Grand Portage Indian Reservation,” Mark Romanski, Chief of Natural Resources for Isle Royale National Park said. “It also represents an opportunity to evaluate the impacts of restoring predation to the island ecosystem.”
This past weekend saw seven wolves brought to Isle Royale, the latest shipment of a multi-year plan to re-establish a wolf population that could keep the burgeoning moose population, estimated at around 1,500, in check.
"Six wolves that remained on Michipicoten Island, Ontario, and one wolf from mainland Ontario were captured, vet checked, and transported to Isle Royale National Park for release over the last couple of days," the National Parks of Lake Superior Foundation announced on Facebook page.
In recent years, park managers have discussed wolf management on 209-square-mile Isle Royale with wildlife managers and geneticists from across the United States and Canada, and have received input during public meetings and from Native American tribes of the area. Those discussions examined the question of whether wolves should be physically transported to Isle Royale, in large part due to concerns that a loss of the predators would lead to a boom in the moose population that likely would over-browse island vegetation.
Under the plan the National Park Service adopted last year year, up to 30 wolves are to be set free at Isle Royale over the next three to five years in a bid to build genetic diversity into the park's wolf packs. In late February, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry successfully transferred four wolves to Isle Royale.
The release of seven wolves this past weekend brought the population of predators on Isle Royale to 13. Eight previously had been moved to the park -- four in the fall, and four this winter -- but one died from pneumonia soon after being released and another left the park via ice bridge last month and headed to Minnesota where she had been captured.
A male wolf waiting to be transferred to Isle Royale National Park/OMNRF, J Lethe
The moose collaring project at Isle Royale is the first since 1984. During the collaring operation, a helicopter team, wildlife veterinarian, and wildlife research biologists attached GPS collars to the 10 female moose on both the west and east ends of the island. During capture they also collected biological samples and assessed individual moose health. The moose were alert and able to walk away in under two minutes after being handled by the team. Since then, the research team has been continuously monitoring them by GPS.
The team plans to conduct several studies with this data including understanding differences in the health of island and mainland moose populations, how predator dynamics influence moose populations, how forest management influences moose, and the role of climate on moose and ecosystem health.
In contrast to mainland Minnesota, the moose population on Isle Royale has increased rapidly in recent years. Although moose in Isle Royale also suffer from high winter tick loads, brain worm has not made it to the island because of the absence of deer. Another crucial difference is that wolf numbers are high on the mainland (due to high deer densities), whereas until recently on Isle Royale only a few remaining wolves are impacting the moose population. As a result, impact of the growing moose population on forest composition and succession is increasingly apparent and experts are concerned that such high levels of browsing damage are impacting forest regeneration and may eventually lead to nutritional stress for moose.
“The Grand Portage Band of Chippewa were the historical occupants of Isle Royale and used the Island for subsistence purposes.” says Seth Moore, PhD, director of biology and environment at the Grand Portage Band of Chippewa. “We hope to learn how to better manage moose populations from this research.”
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