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Game Informations: Developer & Publisher: Milestone S.r.l. Genre: Course automobile, Simulation, Sport Platforms: Windows Release date: 7 oct. 2016 MSRP : 39,99$ When it comes to ambition, it's impossible to fault Ride 2. It seeks to combine the thrill of riding a motorbike--that sense of exhilarating exposure that comes from hurtling across tarmac without the insulation inherent to sitting in a car--with the form and depth of the likes of Gran Turismo or Forza Motorsport. It's an admirable goal, an attempt to give bike lovers the same kind of exhaustive outing that car nuts have been spoilt with for years. And considering developer Milestone had the original Ride to gain experience and test the design philosophy, it's more than reasonable to expect this sequel to offer something slick and highly tuned. Unfortunately, that isn't the case. Ride 2 stutters at first gear and that awkward first spin off the line plagues the rest of the journey. One of the great achievements of both Forza and Gran Turismo is that they instil a sense of aspiration among their players. We want to move through the ranks, to earn cash and unlock new vehicles. These games tempt us to learn new skills and put them to the test across new tracks and against more accomplished opponents, online and off. This aspirational drive provides the motivation for self-improvement and when we're rewarded for achieving as much we feel good about ourselves. The cycle of effort, reward, and satisfaction is in place. Ride 2 offers only the effort portion of this cycle thanks to a series of mishaps that consistently undermine your time spent with it. A uninteresting presentation results in muted enjoyment at every turn, the in-game financial model forces you to grind through your career in the most restrictive, stilted manner possible, and despite the huge number of available bikes it doesn't take long for a sense of repetition to rise to the surface. Individually, none of Ride 2's problems are drastic enough to be game breakers. In unison, however, their collective impact is impossible to overlook. The in-helmet camera is just one example of an admirable goal being poorly executed. Racing from this perspective is fine when you're travelling in a straight line, but as soon as you make even the slightest attempt to turn your entire view is warped in such a way as to create an unwelcome and unforgivable disconnect between what your brain expects and what your eyes are telling it. Your helmet stays static and straight, even as your bike--visible at the bottom of the screen--leans into and out of corners. This has the effect of making it feel as though you, as the rider, exist in a completely separate space to your bike and you soon develop a distrust of the visuals as a means to communicate whether you should be heavier or lighter on the analogue stick. Not ideal for a game with simulation ambitions. World Tour is where most of the single player content is stored, its combination of events and challenges tied into a system of earning money in order to upgrade and purchase new bikes. It's a straightforward affair of the kind that has been seen many times before, but it's the way its finer points work (or don't) that prevents it from satisfying. Upon completing the game's initial tutorial you're asked to choose your first bike from a small selection of different kinds, from dirt to road bikes. From there you move on to choose which event you're going to enter as the first of your career, but there's no indication as to what your selected bike is eligible for until you're deep into the multitude of menu layers. Couple this with an excessive number of loading screens and you're left with an initial user experience that does everything to convince you to stop playing before you've even started to compete. The dreadful voiceover that plays over the World Tour intro video offers little in the way of charm, either, as does the soulless shop housing new bikes. Individually, none of Ride 2's problems are drastic enough to be game breakers. In unison, however, their collective impact is impossible to overlook. Acquiring new bikes is essential to progression and engaging in the potential for diversity that such a broad range of vehicles allows. The problem here is that new bikes are not cheap in comparison to earnings for winning races, and your initial hardware doesn't keep up with the competition for long. As such, you soon find yourself racing like a menace in order to give yourself a chance at a podium finish and lining your bank account with enough coin to give yourself a sporting chance. Simply, the fact that you can race so angrily and aggressively works to undermine the core structure of Ride 2 and its attempts at being the real riding simulator. Cutting off opponents to slow them down, purposefully hitting into them when entering corners and using them as a tool to improve braking all works once you've grasped the physics model. Of course, you don't have to engage in any of this but its mere existence is enough to break your suspension of disbelief and cause you to question whether you're playing an arcade game in simulator clothing. When you're out in front and given free track to race through things do feel energetic in a realistic, interesting way, and you're motivated to improve your skills. As soon as you're surrounded by competitors, though, the experience devolves into something closer to stock car racing. You can earn greater financial rewards by increasing the difficulty, but ramping up the AI to its most challenging setting equates to only a five per cent boost in earnings. It's tempting to simply compete against opponents on 'Very Easy' in order to quickly gain enough financial power to buy the kinds of equipment suitable for the tasks levelled at you. Thereafter you can stop worrying about money and race on the difficulty that's right for you. But this turns Ride 2 into an exercise of grinding through the easiest and least interesting of races until you reach that tipping point whereby you can begin to play as you always intended. The financial formulas underpinning World Tour need serious attention in order to work properly and allow for the kind of personalised approach that other games using this sort of career progression allow for. -----------------------------------------------------------------

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Game Informations : Developer: CI Games Publishers : CI Games Platforms: Microsoft Windows , PS3 , Xbox 360 Initial release date: March 12, 2013 If sniping in real life – outside of the whole morality issue – was as easy as it is in Sniper Ghost Warrior 2, then a few soldiers probably could save the world. Unless you’re playing on the hardest mode, bullet-drop indicators and omniscient AI teammates make sure you know exactly who to shoot and when, taking almost all the tension out of pulling the trigger. Ghost Warrior 2 ultimately does exactly what I feared the most when I started: it takes one of the highest forms of shooting skill and makes it repetitive and uninteresting. Almost every level in Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2’s brief four-or-so-hour campaign boils down to the same thing. You arrive on one of these pretty, CryEngine 3-rendered jungle scenes either alone or with a partner, and then move from position to position, killing everyone as quietly as possible. If you screw up, enemies will rush you with reckless abandon and you’ll probably die, so if you’re playing on Easy or Normal, you’d best kill people in the explicit order you’re told to. Not that that’s particularly difficult, since you seem to always know exactly where enemies are at all times. You’ll need to do sniper-y things, like hold your breath to slow down time (pretty sure snipers can't actually do that, but it represents concentration), or manage your stance to reduce the sway of your barrel, but all in all every stage starts to feel like a series of target shoots with little variation in terms of goals or setting. Especially so during the canned portions where you set up a rifle and can’t move until you’ve hit the targets you’re ordered to kill. Shooting in Ghost Warrior 2 becomes less an art and more of a mundane task. Playing on the hardest difficulty helps a little. Here you don't have big marks over every person's head, so you have to actually hunt for targets. You also don’t have the bullet-drop indicators, meaning that you have to pay attention to the wind and distance to your target, adjusting your aim accordingly. The stripping of these features make some shots a bit more tense, since it really does take time to learn the feel of the weapon, and you might have missed a potential target during your initial scouting. You can’t just do a bit of math (well, mere mortals can't) and figure out exactly where to aim for shots in this mode, you just have to understand how wind speeds and distance will affect your bullet drop. There's a lot of shooting, missing, and then readjusting your aim – trial and error. That’s often not a problem, because in situations where missing a shot might cause a game-over state, Ghost Warrior 2 generally dumbs down the AI enough to give you plenty of time to fire again and score a kill. The enemies might react, but they’ll do so so slowly (not to mention no others seem to hear the percussive bang of your giant, unsilenced rifle) that you have ample time to pick them off. It's a blessing because it helps you get through the story faster, but a curse in that it breaks the illusion that these are human beings with, you know, a desire to live. Very occasional moments in the campaign try to mix things up, but they feel so trite that they did little more than induce heavy sighs. For instance, at one point in Ghost Warrior 2’s story you lose your rifle and have to retrieve it, sneaking around enemies or killing them quietly with a knife or your pistol. The problem is that after you kill the first enemy you can’t just pick up his weapon. Instead, you're forced to play exactly how the designers intended, obvious course of action be damned. Like a good little soldier, you’re playing by someone else’s rules. It's made all the more clear how bad an idea that is when contrasted with the best parts of the campaign: when you’re given an area to clear out or get past, and the freedom to do it however you want. You could alert the enemy troops and deal with them head-on, shoot an enemy grenade to blow them up, or just snipe them quietly. Heck, sometimes you can even just sneak past them altogether. Those parts make me feel more like a thinking, elite soldier, but they alone aren’t enough to add more than a bit of flavoring to largely one-note level design. And remember: even if the entire game had this freeform design, it'd still only be four hours long. Ghost Warrior 2’s multiplayer doesn’t exactly add a lot of diversity to the experience, either. True, lying completely still watching the area in front of you for movement or the glare off another sniper’s scope, or waiting for the sound of a rifle, does create a few moments of high tension. More often, though, it means I'm sitting around for minutes at a time, never seeing anyone or anything, except maybe one of the flickering shadows or other annoying minor glitches that cropped up as I played (on two different PCs). Whole rounds often pass where I’ve fired maybe two shots, and I died many times without ever having a chance to retaliate. The campers among you may find it entertaining, but outside of the very rare intense sniper battle, it quickly became tiresome – especially considering there are only two maps at the time of this review. Verdict Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 isn’t bereft of good ideas or mechanics, it’s just that they’re all trapped in a short series of levels that rarely give you anything all that interesting to do with them. Combine that with some graphical glitches and the slow and ultimately forgettable multiplayer, and you have a mediocre game that all but the hardest of the hardcore sniper-wannabes should pass on. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- System Requirements Minimum: CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo at 2Ghz, or AMD Athlon 64 x2 2Ghz, or better CPU SPEED: Info RAM: 2 GB OS: Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7, with the latest Service Pack VIDEO CARD: NVidia 8800GT with 512Mb RAM or better PIXEL SHADER: 3.0 VERTEX SHADER: 3.0 SOUND CARD: Yes FREE DISK SPACE: 9 GB DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 512 MB Recommended: OS: Win 7 64 Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6400 2.13GHz / AMD Athlon II X4 6400e Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 7750 1GB GDDR5 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 1GB System Memory: 4 GB RAM Storage: 9 GB Hard drive space DirectX 9 Compatible Graphics Card

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Game Informations : Developer: Fireproof Studios Publishers : Fireproof Studios Platforms: Microsoft Windows , PS4 , Oculus Initial release date: 2020 I was already amused with the intricately designed puzzle boxes The Room VR: A Dark Matter was asking me to solve after its first couple levels, but the moment I was really sold on this eery VR puzzler was when it shrank me down to the size of a mouse to solve one from the inside. Its short series of fairly one-note challenges ultimately left me wanting more surprising moments like that, but Developer Fireproof Games has been making well-loved The Room games for more than eight years now, and the premise for the series is a fairly simple one: You’re dropped into a series of relatively small spaces (sometimes a single room, sometimes a series of connected ones) where you have to find clues in the environment and solve puzzles in order to complete a goal – in The Room VR’s case, you’re asked to find a handful of hidden relics. The Room VR: A Dark Matter Gameplay Screenshots The Room VR weaves these relics into a creepy, otherworldly plot about dark magic and invading monsters... I think? Honestly, I’m not totally sure. Its atmosphere is appropriately spooky throughout, but the story itself is poorly explained through a few hand-scrawled notes and brief glimpses of Myst-style FMV characters (one of whom so clearly seems to be wearing a fake rubber mask that it’s downright laughable), while also being completely pointless and unrelated to any of the puzzles you are actually solving. Though a villain was seemingly introduced, I genuinely have no idea who they were or what the ultimate threat was. Thankfully, I didn’t need any of that context to enjoy solving the puzzles at hand. The Room VR has three main levels – plus two short ones that mostly bookend the plot – each with an interesting theme (one is about Egyptian relics, while another is set in an old church) and a compelling set of challenges to best. Most of those take the form of more traditionally presented puzzle boxes, with your job being to twist a hidden piece, insert the right item, or find the correct combination to open part of it and be rewarded with your next clue – all of which is made more tactile and engaging when you get to use your actual VR hands to do that stuff. You’ll rarely just stand at a box until you find all its secrets. But what’s really nice about how The Room VR structures its puzzles is that you’ll rarely just stand in front of a box until you find all of its secrets and move on to the next one. Instead, clues and collectible objects intertwine – you may solve one part of a puzzle box only to get a pendant that you then need to take to another, which then gives you a clue for solving another, and so on. It adds a welcome bit of motion to the experience, and also frequently means there are multiple paths you could be making progress down at any given time. The Room VR also cuts out the impulse to check every little corner for clues by tying movement to predetermined teleportation points (with no free-movement option). That means you’ll only be able to go to a place if it has something useful for you within arms reach, which is certainly helpful even if it also makes puzzles a little more straightforward than I’d expected when I first arrived. Either way, I did appreciate that old points (and even objects you pick up) are often removed as options entirely when you’ve exhausted their purpose. Those little assistances feel necessary because the intuitive nature of VR muddles the clarity of what you can and can’t interact with at any given time. Part of the reason for that is because The Room VR really does look fantastic, and its intricately designed props are awesome to admire and inspect up close. But since the interactable bits of both the puzzle boxes and the environments around them blend into the decorative bits, I spent a lot of my time just grabbing at things to see if they were grabbable – which they frequently weren’t. Having every object bolted to the table unless you need to use it doesn’t feel great in VR, and can sometimes make figuring out solutions a matter of going through the motions rather than engaging in tricky problem solving. The moments I did get stuck were very rarely because a puzzle was too “hard,” but because the interactable nature of something just wasn’t made clear. There is a helpful built-in hint system I had to consult a couple of times, but doing so almost always made me go “Oh, I literally didn’t know I could interact with that,” rather than offering a moment of clever realization. It’s a shame that there’s just not much of this game total. That said, there were still plenty of very cool moments of cleverness thanks to a mechanic introduced in its church level: one that lets you shrink down and enter certain tiny openings. The first of these has you unlocking a cupboard by entering its keyhole and picking the lock from within by manually moving each pin, which was just awesome. Another great puzzle has you move the mechanisms inside a puzzle box at full size in order to build a bridge that you can then cross once shrunk down inside it. It’s a very weird and cool feeling, and one that absolutely takes advantage of what VR does well. It’s a shame that there’s just not much of this game total, though. The Room VR took me just over two hours to beat, which left me a bit startled when it was already over. While I certainly enjoyed what was there, I couldn’t help but want more of its cleverest ideas. This isn’t Fireproof Games’ fault, but in a post-Half-Life: Alyx VR world (that game’s hacking puzzles alone can be more challenging and more interesting than some similar ones The Room VR has to offer), this doesn’t feel like enough. Verdict The Room VR: A Dark Matter does a great job of making its interactive puzzle boxes more than just hunting for the right knob, often leaning into what VR does best by putting you into cool situations that are shown off in flashy and polished fashion. Unfortunately, there’s just not a lot of it here, and its intricate detail can occasionally cause confusion as you flail at the mostly inert world around you. Still, its two hours of puzzles were certainly worth solving.

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Name game: Tropical Air Hockey Price: 1,95$ (3,99$ without promotion) Link store: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1218830/Tropical_Air_Hockey/ Free to keep when you get it before 18 Apr Requirements: MINIMALE : o Système d'exploitation et processeur 64 bits nécessaires o Système d'exploitation : Windows 10 o Processeur : Intel i5-4590, AMD FX 8350 equivalent or better o Mémoire vive : 4 GB de mémoire o Graphiques : Nvidia® GeForce® GTX 980, AMD Radeon R9 290 equivalent or better o Espace disque : 3 GB d'espace disque disponible RECOMMANDÉE : o Système d'exploitation et processeur 64 bits nécessaires o Système d'exploitation : Windows 10 o Processeur : Intel i7-3770 equivalent or greater o Mémoire vive : 8 GB de mémoire o Graphiques : NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1060 equivalent or greater

There’s no stopping AMD Ryzen 4000 from demolishing Intel. With Team Red already sitting on top of the CPU world, selling 40% more processors than its rival, these big flagships are going for the knockout, with the Ryzen 4000 processors for laptops already nearly as fast as their desktop counterparts. After giving us a sneak peek at sneak peek at AMD Ryzen 4000 processors for laptops at CES 2020, these mobile processors are already out, delivering hugely improved performance across the board. As evidenced by the compelling Asus Zephyrus G14, they’re delivering desktop-class performance in a lightweight laptop, changing the gaming laptop scene forever. It doesn’t stop there – AMD may also be preparing to add a new flagship APU, Ryzen 9 4900U, to the lineup. Of course, laptops aren't the entire scene. We've heard plenty of whispers about the AMD Zen 3-equipped Ryzen 4000 processors for desktops, which could be coming in October. And, these will be based on a 7nm+ manufacturing process. That means that they could potentially push clock speeds high enough to really make Intel hurt, especially if Team Blue stays stuck at 14nm on desktop. There's already so much information and gossip out there about the next generation of Ryzen for laptops and desktops. So we gathered all the most important bits right here in this article to help you stay ahead of the Ryzen 4000 curve. We'll also make sure to keep this article updated with all the latest news, so be sure to bookmark us so you can stay on top of it. We'll probably see Ryzen 3 laptops starting around the $600 mark, with laptops rocking the Ryzen 7 4800H or 4800U hitting the premium market above $1,000. However, we can be a bit more specific with our speculation on the desktop lineup. AMD Ryzen 3rd Generation saw higher prices than Ryzen 2000, largely due to the introduction of Ryzen 9 processors with up to 16 cores. However, the Ryzen 7 3700X did launch at the same $329 (£319, AU$519) price point as the Ryzen 7 2700X that came before it. Due to the success of chips like the Ryzen 9 3900X and 3950X, however, we fully expect AMD to follow suit with the Ryzen 4000 lineup. For reference, we included the pricing of AMD Ryzen 3000 processors below. We expect the pricing to stay roughly the same for the next generation. AMD Ryzen 9 3950X: $749 (about £590, AU$1,080) AMD Ryzen 9 3900X: $499 (about £390, AU$720) AMD Ryzen 7 3800X: $399 (about £310, AU$580) AMD Ryzen 7 3700X: $329 (about £260, AU$480) AMD Ryzen 5 3600X: $249 (about £200, AU$360) AMD Ryzen 5 3600: $199 (about £160, AU$290) AMD Ryzen 5 3400G: $149 (£139, AU$240) AMD Ryzen 3 3300G: $99 (£94, AU$144)

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As helper. I trust you, try to do a good activity and read the rules <HERE RULES> and don't try to play for rank. Send me your info: Nick / Pw / Tag T/C

First of all, the community is always active, so my request is to help the members of the community to solve their doubts or problems, I will always be willing to do it, hoping to be better every day learning from everyone. Of course, working as a team is the union of forces of each member to carry out a certain project and achieve the final objective. In fact I am in the overwatch project, and the interaction between our project group is good, so I say that teamwork is essential to support each other. I have not been so active in these sessions, but of course my availability will be at your service. 1: Add a calendar to receive daily rewards (example Monday 25 points, and so with the rest of the week) Thus encouraging members and increasing the activity of the community even more, so that they can use them in store. 2: Develop devil's Club with more projects. 3: Add a program who ban fake/multis accounts directly when they register.

Man you're really running out of my patience, I'm really tired of you and your clumsy multi-accounts. Note: The VPN will not take you anywhere. I know you very well @BhOOTh! @KAKA- @Cum_o1_Dr@g0n @Super Galaxy? T/C

Nickname: @Master_Kill Age: 17 Link with your forum profile: https://csblackdevil.com/forums/profile/74474-master_kill/ How much time do you spend on our channel ts every day?: 6-7 hours ScreenShot as you have over 30 hours on CSBD TS3 Server (type ''!info'' in CSBD Guard) : idk i find not The Bot "CSBD GUARD" Link with your last request to join in our Team: Last 5 topics that you made on our section:

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This Military-Tested Diet Is Designed to Prevent Jet Lag When the Wright Brothers invented the airplane, they accidentally invented a new ailment, too: jet lag. Flying across multiple time zones can leave people sleepy during the day, wide-awake at night, and unable to concentrate ever, really. Luckily, there's a military-approved solution, developed in the 1980s and still in use today: the Argonne diet. The Argonne diet was created by Charles Ehret, a scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, back in the 1980s. So although it was initially pitched as a lifehack for vacationers, detailed in Ehret's book "Overcoming Jet Lag," it started in a government context, and it's since been formally tested by the military. Soldiers do really need to minimize their jet lag — they're often deployed many time zones away and have to land ready for combat. So in 2002, the researchers ran a controlled study of the Argonne diet with 186 soldiers. Those who didn't follow the diet were between 7.5 and 16.2 times more likely to experience jet lag symptoms than those who did. The study was small, but the differences are still striking. It's no wonder the Argonne diet has been used by the Army, the Navy, and the CIA. The diet hinges on alternating feasting and fasting for the four days leading up to your flight. It also hinges on breakfast, which is surprisingly important to your internal clock — it tells your stomach the day has officially started. Before you even start your diet, figure out when it's breakfast o'clock at your destination. That's when each of the diet's "days" will start and end. For example, let's say you're flying from Berlin to Seattle. Since 9 a.m. in Seattle is 6 p.m. in Berlin, each 24-hour "day" of the diet would run from 6 p.m. to 6 p.m., Berlin time. (You'd still eat at normal Berlin mealtimes, though — each "day" of the diet would start with dinner, and end with lunch.) Then, eat like this: Day 1: Feast! This means high-protein meals like bacon and eggs for breakfast and lunch to keep your motor revved, and a high-carb, low-protein meal like pasta with red sauce for dinner to make you a little drowsy. You should only consume caffeine between 3 and 5 p.m. in your home time zone. Day 2: Fast! This means eating only light foods — broths, salads, toast, et cetera — for every meal. Again, you should only consume caffeine between 3 and 5 p.m. in your home time zone. Day 3: Feast a second time! Day 4: Fast a second time! This is the day of your flight, so you'll fast at least partially on the plane. When the clock strikes breakfast time in your destination — so at 9 a.m., Seattle time, to stick with the Berlin to Seattle example — eat a high-protein breakfast. Then stretch, surround yourself with as much natural (or unnatural) light as possible, and above all, stay awake! When you land, you should be feeling fresh as a daisy (that just took a transatlantic flight). If you're traveling for pleasure instead of a life-or-death work trip, though, you can try a modified version of the Argonne diet It's basically just Day 4, but with a true, albeit shortened, fast. You can't eat or drink anything but water for 15 or so hours. It hasn't been as rigorously tested as the Argonne diet, but anecdotally, it checks out. Get stories like this one in your inbox or your headphones: sign up for our daily email and subscribe to the Curiosity Daily podcast. Check out the book where the diet first appeared: The 1987 edition of "Overcoming Jet Lag" by Charles Ehret and Lynne Waller Scanlon is available on Amazon. We handpick reading recommendations we think you may like. If you choose to make a purchase, Curiosity will get a share of the sale.

Want to Climb a Mountain? Here are 5 Peaks Perfect for Beginners In the mountain adventure world, just like anywhere, it's best to start small. Whether you're just getting into hiking and camping around peaks or you have your sights set on someday climbing bigger, snowier, or steeper mountains, some places are better to start than others. Regardless of your mountain pursuit, these are the best peaks to lay the foundation and get off the ground. Colorado's 14ers (the 53 peaks in the state that reach 14,000 feet/4,000 meters or more) have a reputation as being especially hard. That's mostly because of their elevation, which ranks all of these mountains as some of the lower-48's tallest. Granted, they are tall, and all but the most prepared and fit will likely feel the effects of the altitude at least a little bit (nausea, headaches, shortness of breath, etc.), but that doesn't make them unattainable. Take Grays Peak, for example, a classic first-timer's summit in the Front Range. The summit may be at 14,267 feet (4,348 meters), but you'll start hiking at 11,240 feet (3,426 meters). You'll climb just over 3,000 feet (900 meters) in a quick 3.6 miles (5.8 kilometers) along easy trails from the trailhead to the summit — a stiff day, but by no means a slog, which makes Grays one of the best introductions to hiking mountains you'll find in the Rockies. Feeling good on top? Tack on another 14er, Torreys Peak, less than a mile away. A 23-mile (37-kilometer) backpacking trip through Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains might sound like jumping into the deep end of backpacking, but this route through Shenandoah National Park is one of the best places for beginners to wade in. Break it up into a few days, limiting your daily mileage to between 5 and 7 miles (8–11 kilometers). From the top of Hawksbill Mountain, the park's tallest peak, you'll have wide-ranging views of the surrounding hills and valleys, enough to get you hooked on hiking a section of the classic Appalachian Trail from Hawksbill Gap south toward Elktown. It's hard for anyone to hang out in the Pacific Northwest and spend much time staring at the snowcapped volcanoes that dot the region without dreaming of climbing one. They may conjure up images of crampon- and ice-ax-clad mountaineers roped together, wearing huge puffy jackets with headlamps strapped to their helmets — an idea that wouldn't be inaccurate for a lot of the Cascade Mountains — but there are easier places to start. Mount Adams, though the second tallest peak in Washington at 12,276 feet (3,741 meters), is one of the more mellow mountaineering objectives in the area and a great place to get the hang of some of the basics. The South Spur route was once so simple that miners regularly made the trek up to supply sulfur mining on the mountain. During the late summer, you'll be fine with regular hiking boots, but during the spring and early summer, the moderate slopes are a great place to practice with crampons and ice axes without fear of falling all the way down the mountain. Get to the top of this volcano for a view of Mount Rainier, and you'll be itching for a more technical peak in no time. If you want to pick up rock climbing and be hooked forever, whet your whistle in California's Yosemite Valley, which surrounds El Capitan. You might recognize El Cap as the site of a handful of news-breaking rock climbs in the last few years, exemplifying the 3,000-foot (900-meter) wall as one of the world's more famous — and most difficult — rock climbing destinations. But the Yosemite Valley is far more than just El Cap; it's also one of the most storied, historic, and scenic places to be introduced to the sport.Find friends with experience setting up anchors and belaying, or hire a guide service to show you the technical side of things, then safely start scrambling up any of the Valley's coarse rock slabs (a smooth piece of rock), cracks (a face with a crack in the rock that you can use to shimmy up), or chimneys (a gap in the rocks that you can shove your whole body into). Not only will you be learning while surrounded by some of the most beautiful scenery in the country, but you'll be climbing rock that's so high quality, even the most experienced climbers still dream of it. Apart from being known as having some of the world's worst weather, New Hampshire's Mount Washington is a mecca of winter activities. Winter hiking is a challenge and the high winds and extreme cold on its upper slopes (even though Washington's summit only rises to 6,288 feet/1,917 meters) make it one of the best mountaineering training grounds in the Eastern United States. The bowl of Tuckerman Ravine is one of the most classic backcountry ski destinations on earth. But another winter sport for which Mount Washington and its surrounding valley stand out is ice climbing. All over the region, you can spot climbers with spikes on the feet and ice tools in their hands climbing their way up frozen waterfalls. At lower elevations, the region holds some of the best beginner ice around, and up high, the gullies of Huntington Ravine fill with thousands of feet of ice, making Mount Washington a bucket-list destination for ice climbers of all levels. Get stories like this one in your inbox each morning. Sign up for our daily email here. Ready to get started? Find the answers to all of your beginner questions in "The Mountain Guide Manual: The Comprehensive Reference — From Belaying to Rope Systems and Self-Rescue" by certified mountain guides Marc Chauvin and Rob Coppolillo. We handpick reading recommendations we think you may like. If you choose to make a purchase, Curiosity will get a share of the sale.

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