17 Feb You Need to Go on A F***king Adventure
via Huckberry by Arlo Crawford
Sinuhe Xavier’s life is way cooler than yours. He makes his living by going on adventures, directing films, producing shoots, and generally getting deep in the mud in over 35 countries across 6 continents (and counting.) Having started his career as a professional ski mountaineer for the North Face and a photographer for Burton Snowboards, Sinuhe knows where the good stuff is hidden.
Sinuhe Xavier
Sinuhe Xavier is a director who consistently creates astonishing campaigns for the best-loved brands in the world. He splits his time between Colorado and California, ever-ready to embark to the next location.. Having shot in over 35 countries over 6 continents provides the experience to adapt to any environment to create content beyond the usual creative scope.
He’s since produced campaigns for some of the biggest brands in the business, like Nike and Land Rover. He’s also worked on feature films, including Wild with Reese Witherspoon, and 127 Hours, Danny Boyle’s film dramatizing the story of Aron Ralston and his ordeal in Canyonlands National Park.
So we’ve established that Sinuhe is a badass. Which begs the obvious question: How do I get some of that for myself? Luckily, he’s happy to share.
Last year, we hired Sinuhe to get us lost. He’s been overlanding for years, and he organized a shoot in Moab for Proof’s 72 Hour Collection, where he showed us a whole new side of the park, one that tourists rarely see. If you really want to get out there, to explore the blank parts of the map, that’s where Sinuhe’s skill set comes in.
(Note: The images in this article we’re all taken during that trip to Moab.)
What follows are six tips, directly from Sinuhe himself. Some of these are about the proper mindset to find adventure, and some are more specific, like finding the secret trove of adventure hiding in your local library. But all these tips share the common goal of getting you out there to try new things, meet new people, and hopefully, not get trapped in a slot canyon from which the only means of escape is sawing off your own arm. (IFYKY)
“Enjoy this primer on how to get out there to do some badass shit.”
There’s more to come! In the next few months, we plan to share more of Sinuhe’s epic adventures here in a series we’re calling “Dispatches,” He’ll start with the Mexican 1000 Rally, the “Happiest Race on Earth,” and then give us stories about some of his most astonishing journeys and how he achieved them.
Before we get there though, enjoy this primer on how to get out there to do some badass shit.
Rule One: Get Weird
No one cares that you climbed Everest. OK, that’s not entirely true; if you have climbed Everest, we’re proud of you and we think you’re great. But there have been 11,300 summit ascents of the famous mountain since 1953, so your selfie from the Hillary Step isn’t entirely unique.
Mount Rainier, despite its difficulty, is way more popular: approximately 5,000 people summit that mountain every year. So when it came time to climb Rainier, Sinuhe skipped the standard ascent. He chose to climb the mountain during the summer solstice and then ski down Fuhrer Finger, one of the longest runs in North America.
Doing the longest ski run in North America on the longest day of the year? Now that’s an adventure. “I never had any ambition to climb Rainier” says Sinuhe, “But put other constraints on it—the longest day of the year and the longest route—and boom, now you’ve got a genuine adventure that other people have not done.”
“The idea is so dumb. Those things are so uncomfortable, there’s no suspension, and you can’t pack anything in it. Also, it’s not waterproof.”
That’s the crux of getting weird; sometimes you need to add “qualifiers”—start with something cool but common, and find a way to make it unique. “How many people have ridden a bicycle across the United States? Quite a few,’ says Sinuhe. “But how many people have written a unicycle across the United States? That’s a qualifier.”
In fact, Sinuhe has been kicking around an idea for an ultimate qualifier for a while. Plenty of people have driven from Costa Rica to the US; it’s a tough route but definitely doable. But how many people have purchased a tuk-tuk — the motorized 3-wheeled rickshaws that serve as transportation in countries around the word—in Costa Rica and driven that across the border instead? Zero.
“The idea is so dumb. Those things are so uncomfortable, there’s no suspension, and you can’t pack anything in it,” says Sinuhe. “Also, it’s not waterproof.”
But it would be a hell of a lot of fun, and that’s the point. Even mundane activities, navigating customs for example, suddenly becomes an interesting challenge. And “interesting challenge” is just another term for adventure…
…. keep reading the full & original article HERE