On the 6th day of FIFAD two films stood out. One looked at a wheelchair bound woman who still had the urge to go climbing and the second film looked at a woman who went from riding snowboarding lines in winter to base jumping in summer. By having these two documentaries the FIFAD event promoted women who appreciate and enjoy extreme sports. A few weeks ago I wrote about superhuman climbers, it explored how differently abled people were empowered through the efforts by climbing centres to allow wheelchair bound people, people with mental issues and others to climb despite the challenge.
Sports and live events are Twitter Cash cows, as a result of which the will of those contributing to twitter financially is given priority. I have seen two or three tweets about the speed with which olympic anim gifs and other content is removed. In one case I saw that content is pulled down within minutes. On the other side of the equation is bullying and harassment of ordinary people on twitter.
During the FIFAD event I was invited by one of the people I was working alongside to try paragliding. This is a sport that I have thought about trying for more than a decade by now. Many years ago I bought a book about the theory of flying parapente and I have often watched them take off from places like the peaks near Lucerne, from St Hilaire du Touvet, land close to home and more.
On the Fifth day of the FIFAD event Claude Nicollier came. He is the Swiss Astronaut who went on a number of STS missions to fix the Hubble Telescope between 1992 to 1999. He is an astrophysicist with connections to this part of Switzerland. The Sonneurs D’ormont rang cow bells as the group moved from one area to another. The conference centre where this event is taking place is now named after him.
The fourth Day of FIFAD could have had the banner of youth and children of Alpinism. It began with a conference by Swiss university students who had travelled to Siberia for their projects, a short documentary about the actress who played Heidi in the recent film, disadvantaged youth who went to the mountains to help on a farm, The Makers of Dreams about the Geneva CAS branch and how it encourages young people to experiment with Alpinism and trekking.
FIFAD Day 2 FIFAD’s second day’s documentaries were introspective. They looked at mining in Bolivia, Jean Troillet’s life of adventure and the film Sherpa. [caption id=“attachment_3257” align=“aligncenter” width=“660”] The peaks we see from the Festival[/caption]
Tous Les Jours La Nuit Tous Les Jours La Nuit is a documentary by Jean-Claude Wicky who passed away recently. The documentary looked at the lives of Bolivian miners who have to work for up to 20 hours a day in mines where the air temperature can reach up to 50°c, where the life expectancy is between 40-45 years and where they barely earn enough to live.
FIFAD Day 1 From the 6th to the 13th of August 2016 The International Alpine Film Festival, FIFAD, is taking place in the Alpine town of Les Diablerets. This is a week long festival of Alpine films covering the environment, extreme sports, adventure and more.
Alpland Alpland is a photo exhibit outside of images of Alpine life in black and white. The images were taken by Romano Riedo
The Flying Frenchies arrive The image gallery below shows the Flying Frenchies arrive at the film festival.
Via Ferrata and Edelweiss can be combined. I was reminded of this when I was looking at Salanfe’s Instagram account images last night. I saw an image of a chamois and her young and then I saw the picture below of an Edelweiss and I wanted to share that I had also seen Edelweiss.
#monpetitbonheur du jour ! Magnifiques #Edelweiss à #Salanfe#hiking#rando#balade#valais#moneteenvalaispic.twitter.com/soa6GEbe2Y
— Fabienne Marclay (@salanfe) August 4, 2016
I saw edelweiss on the Via Ferrata de Rougemont on the 31st of August 2014 according to Google Photos.
The weather was clear so I was admiring the Tour D’Aï from the Via Ferrata de La Cascade. I was in Les Diablerets as I am one of the volunteers at the FIFAD film festival. I turned up three hours before I was needed and as I had all my climbing gear, except the pulley for the tyrollean in the car I drive I was able to put on my climbing gear and go for an individual climb of the Via Ferrata.
Plague inc is a game that is available on multiple platforms. These are pc, android, ios and windows phone. The version I played was on android. If you want to watch someone play the game you can watch this series: I was at the first general Staff Meeting for the UNAIDS program a few years ago and more recently I was at the World Health organisation during the SARS crisis helping with Virtual Press conferences.