Summit Murder Mystery Series

By  Paul Dworin   Mt. Everest  will soon become more accessible to adventurers with the construction of a 65-mile highway linking the village of Jiri to Lukla—considered the gateway to Mt. Everest. Despite the good news, however, the capital of Nepal, Kathmandu, continues to suffer the side effects of climate change. And, as Kathmandu is the nation’s production and consumption center, any climate-related hazards impacting daily life there will have a spillover effect on the rest of this poor Himalayan nation. Nepal’s glaciers have lost about a third of their ice reserves since 1977, according to Bloomberg News . The ice melt is having a serious impact on the weather, as glaciers impact climate dynamics such as the high-altitude jet streams that can bring monsoons or prolong droughts. “It’s affecting daily life,” said Ram Sharan Mahat, Nepal’s finance minister, who projects just a one-half percent economic growth this year due to the...

  by Kevin S. Held Bob Wheeler, right, and his son, Jack Wheeler, at the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch) WEBSTER GROVES, MO (KTVI) – The Guinness Book of World Records certified an 85-year-old Webster Groves man as the oldest person to summit Mount Kilimanjaro, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Wednesday . Bob Wheeler reached the top of the 19,340-foot mountain on October 2, 2014 , along with his son, Jack. Kilimanjaro, located in Tanzania, is the highest peak on the African continent and the tallest freestanding mountain in the world. It took him five days to make the trek, according to the Guinness World Records website . Wheeler has also climbed Mt. Fuji in Japan and Mt. Aconcagua in Argentina. He published a book on mountain climbing in 2010. Wheeler is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy in West Point and a retired lieutenant colonel. For more information about the Summit Murder ...

Posted by PeterGreenberg.com   It’s a new year, and that means it’s time to find new travel inspiration. With topics varying from climbing Mount Kilimanjaro to volunteering around the world to back-alley Vietnamese adventures, we found eight travel memoirs coming out this year you won’t want to miss. Displacement: A Travelogue  by Lucy Knisley – February 8, 2015 Lucy Knisley is a graphic memoirist and travelogue cartoonist with all the witty charm of a modern, twentysomething woman. In this story, Knisley paints the adventures of her volunteer travels aboard a cruise ship to watch over her ailing grandparents. Wide Open World: How Volunteering Around the Globe Changed One Family’s Lives Forever  by John Marshall – February 10, 2015 John Marshall, a middle-aged man in a deteriorating twenty-year marriage and father to two teenagers lost in their own worlds, decided to take his family on a trip around the world to reconnec...