Friday Detours: 21st August 2020

21^st August 2020 | Words by Matt Jones @ WildBounds HQ

#1 Solitude found
Lesotho is a country the size of Belgium but has only two million inhabitants. Its southern interior is a spectacular and little-known landscape of rugged mountains, as mountain biker Dan Milner discovered for Sidetracked mag.

#2 Alpinism for beginners
Aspiring Alpinist? Check out the BMC’s guide to the best 4,000m peaks in the Alps for beginners. All five are located in Switzerland – go figure.

#3 The ultimate wildlife camera?
Canon’s new EOS R5 isn’t really a camera, it’s a supercomputer in a tiny-but-somehow-still-full-frame mirrorless body. That’s the verdict from wildlife photographer Dave Stephenson, anyway, who spent a day with this little piece of tech wizardry and was utterly blown away.

#4 Hands-free motorway miles
If you spend a lot of time on our motorways, frantically trying to escape to the hills at every opportunity, you’ll probably see the merits of hands-free driving systems. Car makers say that Automated Lane Keeping Systems (ALKS) could prevent 47,000 serious accidents and save almost 4,000 lives over the next decade.  

#5 The tech that could make climbing Everest safer
The odds of dying on Everest are about one in 100, but the use of a new pulse oximeter could drastically reduce that risk. Expedition leader Lukas Furtenbach plans to unveil the tech on Everest during the 2021 season that, he claims, will make climbing the world’s tallest peak as safe as flying.