Adventure Cheats - Symmmetry Magazine

With so-callled adventure companies making it easier to climb mountains and explore the ocean floor, Adam McCulloch asks if we’ve all gone just a little bit soft?

A modern mantra for adventure travel might be “no plane, no gain” – these days, the pain part can be managed thanks to jets, helicopters and a host of mechanical conveniences aimed at making life’s outdoor challenges just that little bit more accessible. 

For example, thanks to North Pole Extreme (www.northpolextreme.com) conquering True North is as easy as stepping into a chopper. Guests spend a couple of hours on top of the earth imagining how it might feel to actually walk there…without losing fingers or having to choose which beloved sled-dog to devour first. Even Mount Everest has a shortcut. Cosmic Air tours (mountainflights.com/Cosmic.htm) fly deep into the Khumbu Valley to rubberneck at the ant trail of climbers inching along the ridge. Over in Europe, earning adventure stripes is as simple as a slip of the tongue. The mumbled words “Klein Matterhorn” are easily confused with “I climbed the Matterhorn”. The former involves no more than a cable car and elevator ride to a lofty 12,739-foot viewing platform (bergbahnen.zermatt.ch) the latter, a punishing ascent up the spine of an angry behemoth that routinely dispatched unprepared climbers into the afterlife. 

Occasionally a little mechanized help makes perfect sense, and in fact gives you more bang for your buck. Just off Hawaii’s Big Island, Scuba Torpedo Tours use Seadoo scuba sleds (aka underwater golf carts) to ferry limp-legged divers around. Cheating? Maybe, but the cushy ride gives divers the stamina for up to five dives per day and means group dives aren’t held back by slow swimmers.

A well-crafted adventure cheat makes any challenge more comfortable, convenient or accessible, without diminishing the spirit of adventure. Take, for example, Alaska on the Home Shore. They take clients deep into the wilds of Alaska on extended sea-kayaking odysseys that once might have necessitated wrestling grizzlies for food. The difference is, a reassuringly luxurious mother ship trails paddlers at a discrete distance, ready to provide hot meals and comfy beds (www.homeshore.com).

Until recently mountaineers often endured a three-day bush walk (viewed as a necessary tedium) before climbers even reached the rope up zone. Well walk no more my fellow adrenaline junkies. Canadian Mountain Holidays (www.cmh.com) — a company whose stock in trade is helicopter-assisted skiing and hiking — have just added heli-mountaineering to their activity roster. After a hot breakfast at the lodge in front of the roaring fire, a helicopter takes you to the mountain so fast you’ll still be sucking Canadian bacon from your teeth. It’s an adventure that aims to push the bounds of every phobia: fear of flying, heights, open spaces, grizzly bears…you name it.

While we respect and admire great explorers like Edmund Hillary, Roald Amundsen and Thor Heyerdahl for their grit and determination, adventure cheats let us live the dream without having to devote a lifetime to achieving it. With the lightweight design and all wheel drive, our Subaru allows us to explore beaches, deserts, mountains and venture far beyond the black stump. Adventure purists may cry fowl at using modern conveniences to conquer mountains but, if you wind up the windows and activate the climate control and in-car entertainment, it’s hard to tell what they’re saying all the way down there.

Words by Adam McCulloch. Originally published in Symmetry Magazine. The format has been altered to suit Tumblr.