South rim trails start to reopen, Norse cuts its own flights to lease planes instead, and a Croatian free-diver makes history (Saturday Selection)

Throughout the week, our team shares articles they’ve stumbled upon that may interest our readers, even if they might not otherwise merit a full post. Here are some of the posts we found interesting this week: South rim trails start to reopen, Norse cuts its own flights to lease planes instead, and a Croatian free-diver makes history.

Grand Canyon National Park reopens trails on South Rim

In a previous Saturday Selection, I mentioned the loss of the Grand Canyon Lodge on the North Rim after a fire devastated the area. These fires also caused the temporary closure of all major trails within the park. Now at last, trails are starting to open back up again on the South Rim. The trails that are now open are: South Kaibab Trail: Trailhead to Tipoff, Tonto Trail: Tipoff to Havasupai Gardens, and Bright Angel Trail: Trailhead to Pipe Creek Resthouse. Throughout the fall, more and more is scheduled to open up (Phantom Ranch and Bright Angel Campground, for example), but it may be a while before North Rim trails open up again.

Bits: British Airways Summer 2026 long haul changes, Norse slashes its ‘own brand’ routes

Apparently, there’s a bit of a slowdown in the plane industry in terms of order fulfillment, and with it comes new opportunities for aircraft needs to be met. For example, Norse Atlantic is cutting several of its own routes between the US & Europe so that it can instead lease out nearly half of its fleet to IndiGo. This gives the Indian carrier a quicker pathway to launching new flights to Europe without needing to wait for new planes to do it. For Norse Atlantic however, it means they will lose the following routes: Athens to Los Angeles, Berlin to New York JFK, London Gatwick to Miami, Oslo to New York JFK, Paris CdG to Los Angeles, New York JFK

Croatian Freediver Shatters Record For Longest-Held Breath

Freediving is one of the most terrifying but also worthwhile things I’ve ever done while traveling, fueled mostly by FOMO and an inability to say no to anything free. No, that’s not just a pun. Drew and I, and one of our friends, had the opportunity to barter some filming for a free freediving course in Bali back in our nomad era. I’ve never been all that comfortable as a swimmer, especially in the ocean, but I can usually talk myself into things like snorkeling and at least one or two very small cliff jumps for the sake of adventure. But freediving is like the final-boss-level activity for anyone with ocean anxieties. This is the kind of diving you do with no oxygen whatsoever, just by holding your breath and using breathing techniques and efficient movements to grant yourself as much underwater exploration as possible. It’s really quite incredible, and I learned a lot from the course even before entering the terrifying stages of actual diving. For instance, I learned about the “Mammillian Dive Reflex,” which theorizes that all mammals, including humans, have certain physical reactions to submersion in the water that will help them preserve oxygen. If I’m remembering correctly, our course teachers could hold their breath for as long as 7 minutes.

That may sound impressive, but a Croatian freediver just shattered the record for longest breath hold, surpassing the previous record by almost 5 minutes and sustaining his breath-hold for 29 minutes and three seconds! Now, there are a few disclaimers that will make this all sound more believable: for one, he wasn’t actively freediving when he broke this record – he was lying at the bottom of a pool. Additionally, he prepared for the breath-hold by inhaling pure oxygen for about 5 minutes before his attempt. By comparison, his breath-hold time without this pure oxygen is 10 minutes and 8 seconds. Both of those numbers are sufficiently impressive to me. Next time you watch a quick episode of a sitcom, imagine someone holding their breath for its entirety.

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