Reading Time: 4 minutes The psychology of Via Ferrata is similar to the psychology of climbing except that everyone is moving constantly and there are few pre-requisites. As a result of this it is easy for people to push themselves beyond their comfort zones. They can be made uncomfortable by how high they are off the ground, how…
Reading Time: < 1 minute The Tichodrome Via Ferrata near the Creux du Van is not a via Ferrata for beginners. Yesterday I went with a group of people and it took two and a half hours rather than the one and a half hours that it was meant to take. There are two principal reasons for which this is…
Reading Time: 3 minutes People on linkedin were discussing whether social media campaigns are worth organising and keeping. When it comes to extreme sports such as Via Ferrata, rock climbing and other extreme sports then I believe that the audience is ready and enthusiastic enough for a social media presence to be desirable. Via Ferrata is an outdoor sport…
Reading Time: 3 minutes In the 1990s when satellite distribution of television content was in it’s infancy we got a satellite dish and I would watch the Discovery Channel from the start of the broadcast day to when the programmes were played for the second time that day. By watching so many documentaries I learned a lot about the…
Reading Time: 4 minutes The Leukerbad Via Ferrata is a mythical Via Ferrata for those who practice the sport in the french speaking part of Switzerland. It is mythical both for the duration and for the vertical movement. The climb itself takes around 5hr30-6hr and the vertical change is 1000m. Via ferrata is rock climbing for tourists. A team…
Reading Time: 4 minutes Recently I have found mainstream anglo-saxon media much harder to tolerate. A few years ago I went to see 90 films in 9 months. I had no TV and the World Wide Web wasn’t quite as accessible then as it is today. For years I could watch BBC World from the moment I woke up…
Reading Time: < 1 minute I expect that going to do the Moléson Via Ferrata by night will be like scuba diving in the lake. I expect that on the Moléson night I will see the cliff face in front of me and that if I turn around I will see darkness around me. I suspect I will be able to…
Reading Time: 4 minutes On Linkedin and Facebook people believe that mobile phones are making people less sociable then they would be if phones were not around. They believe that the world in which we lived before mobile phones was an open and sociable place where everyone communicated with everyone. These people are forgetting the social context that brought…
Reading Time: 2 minutes Jacques Yves Cousteau’s documentaries would have done well in the social media age, especially if the social media age moved away from profit and money. Imagine that social media companies such as Facebook and twitter were Not For Profit Organisations and imagine that instead of having advertisers they had sponsors. The quality of content and…
Reading Time: 3 minutes This year I went to the Bellevaux Via Ferratas in June and the area had been damaged by the intense storms and rain from weeks of rain. I went there on Tuesday and the via Ferrata des Cascades was different. For a start there was no water in the cascade. As a result those who…