Sure, the pictures are pretty — in a heart-stopping, breathtaking kind of way.
But if you’re wondering, despite the natural beauty, what might possess a 21-year-old soon-to-be college graduate to go whitewater rafting in a winter hail storm or high lining across a tight rope at some distance above the earth, well, there are answers.
You just won’t find them in Carli Berkhouse’s apparently well-grounded childhood.
“We did go outdoors all the time … just not any kind of crazy stuff,” said Carli, the Gazette-Mail’s new digital content producer. Anyone who checks out the Gazette-Mail’s YouTube, Facebook or multimedia sections online will soon be able to see a lot of high-intensity West Virginia adventure videos featuring Carli and friends she meets along the way.
Her position is a first for the nearly 150-year-old newspaper, which says a lot you probably already know about the industry these days: it’s increasingly online. What isn’t so obvious is perhaps the most interesting part. Carli’s super power is capturing extreme adventures to share with the world.
And how she acquired those powers is a story in itself.
“Almost everyone in my family had boats and we would all go water skiing or tubing The majority of the time we went camping we stayed in, like, big campers and that type of thing. Never in tents.”
Never in tents. Never intense. So far, so good.
Then in high school, she had some friends who enjoyed hiking — a lot.
“I found out there are some really cool spots that I had no idea were here,” she said.
Out of necessity thanks to West Virginia’s rocky terrain, she got into bouldering — “It’s where you’re climbing with no harness, no ropes, no nothing. You have a mat under you that’s not very big” though