Blogging from the Top of the World

By: Joe Strupp Many newspaper bloggers practice their craft outside of the newsroom, often pounding on laptops in a corner coffee house, in a basement hideaway, or even sitting pajama-clad in bed. But David Whiting of the Orange County Register has them all beat, becoming the first journo to blog from a mountain range at 22,000 feet.

Whiting, a Register metro editor and outdoors columnist, spent early February scaling the 22,830-foot Aconcagua in Argentina, one of the world's Seven Summits and the highest mountain in South America. But more than that, he blogged each day's adventure for the paper's Web site, www.ocregister.com, dictating his missives via satellite phone to the voice mail of a Web editor who placed them online. "I am in awe of him," says sports team leader Lynne Domash.

Whiting's account described climbing through "six-foot ice spikes" that are "as tough as steel," enduring "blisters and altitude headaches," and crossing rivers "with freezing water above my knees." But, the 51-year-old stressed the trip's beauty and labeled the chills "invigorating."

An accomplished triathlete and marathoner who has climbed Washington's Mt. Rainier and Alaska's Mt. McKinley, Whiting is also paying his own way, editors say. "This is basically his vacation," Domash adds.