February 2014 – Volume Twenty-One, Number Two
EXPEDITION NEWS, founded in 1994, is the monthly review of significant expeditions, research projects and newsworthy adventures. It is distributed online to media representatives, corporate sponsors, educators, research librarians, explorers, environmentalists, and outdoor enthusiasts. This forum on exploration covers projects that stimulate, motivate and educate.
GRANDMOTHER PADDLES FOR CHILDREN
OF GUATEMALAN GARBAGE DUMP
When Deb Walters, 62, of Troy, Maine, first met the families living in the Guatemala City garbage dump community, her life changed. Listening to the mothers describe how they make their living by sorting through the rubbish, she was touched by their dreams of a better life for their children.
Inspired by the grit and perseverance of the mothers and children, Walters decided to push herself by leveraging her years of experience with solo kayak expeditions in the Arctic and elsewhere to kayak more than 2,500 miles from Maine to Guatemala. She leaves July 11 for the approximately one year trip.
Walters is a retired scientist and university leader, Rotarian, and kayaking adventurer. Her previous solo kayaking expeditions were in the Arctic, along the Atlantic coasts in the Northeast and the Maritimes, and through tropical waters in Mexico. After retiring as a neuroscientist and university senior vice president in 2004, she began volunteering with Safe Passage, a non-profit organization registered in Maine and based in Guatemala that works with the families to break the cycle of poverty through education.
In addition to daily updates on social media, she will stop frequently to share the stories of the childrens’ and mothers' success at Safe Passage. For youth both in the dump and along the route, there will be an interactive art project that explores “perseverance” in their own lives.
Walters, who is married and has four grandchildren ages 3 to 7, is seeking a major sponsor looking for a naming opportunity in cause-related marketing. Network TV affiliates such as an NBC station in Maine are committing to ongoing coverage. Chesapeake Light Craft, Epic Kayaks, Talon Woodworks, Four Sigma Foods, Paddlers Supply, Etienne Perret and Rockfish Gap Outfitters are providing equipment; donations are being sought from other outdoor companies.
For more information: dr.deb.walters@gmail.com, www.safepassage.org/expedition
SWIM AROUND IRELAND
Explorer Ripley Davenport, best known for his camel assisted and man hauling desert expeditions in Mongolia, will attempt an 850-mile ultra expedition swim around Ireland in 2014. Diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, it will be an enormous challenge as he battles cold, monotony, fatigue, storms, jellyfish, hunger and isolation. If successful, he will reportedly be the first person to have swum the entire distance around Ireland.
Shadowed by yacht and a support kayak, Davenport, 44, from Norfolk, England, will swim in sea temperatures between 50 to 63 degrees F. up to 12 hours per day. The yacht crew will note the GPS position of exit and entry and also account for drift, thereby ensuring the entire distance of the intended route is completed. An interactive tracker will update his position in real time at: http://www.roundirelandswim.com/route.html
The magnitude of this swim has many elements that reach beyond anything that Davenport has ever attempted and is an indisputable test of human endurance. He hopes that though his Round Ireland Ultra Adventure Swim he will inspire all those who have been faced with adversity. He says of the project, “we can achieve a dream that transcends all our personal boundaries.”
Davenport will be fundraising for the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Ireland; sponsors include Power Traveller, RailRiders, and Termo Original Base Layers.
EXPEDITION UPDATE
Explorers Honor Scott By (Finally) Completing His Expedition
It is known as one of the most intrepid polar expeditions in history, and cost five men their lives. But over 100 years after Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated trek to the South Pole and back, two men have become the first people in history to complete the iconic almost 1,800-mile route.
Early this month, Ben Saunders, 36, from Britain, and former rugby player Tarka L’Herpiniere, 32, from France, completed the epic Terra Nova trek by walking for 1,795 miles across the inhospitable landscape of Antarctica. (See EN, October 2013).
It has taken them 105 days in total and pushed the limits of their mental and physical strength, as each men pulled sleds with over 441 lbs./200 kg of equipment and walked on average 17 miles daily in wind chill as low as minus 50 degrees F. (minus 46 degrees C.) wind chill. The entire trek was equivalent to 69 back-to-back marathons.
Saunders said, “It is almost impossible to comprehend what we have achieved. Completing Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition has been a life-long dream and I’m overcome to be standing here at the finish.”
He continued, “… both Tarka and I feel a combination of awe and profound respect for the endurance, tenacity and fortitude of Captain Scott and his team a century ago.”
Captain Scott and his men died having covered almost 1,600 miles of the route in their bid to become the first men to reach the South Pole.
For more information: www.scottexpedition.com
Jakk in the Pack
If the words “get a life” immediately come to mind, you don’t know Jakk. The Highpointers Club, a group of hikers and climbers crazed about peak bagging, traces its founding to Jack “Jakk” Longacre of Arcadia, Mo. His real first name was Jack, but the “c” key was broken on his typewriter, and instead of getting it repaired, he just changed his name in club correspondence. The “Jakk” nickname stuck (See EN, April 2008).
Jakk passed away and went to that really tall highpoint in the sky in 2002, just shy of his 65th birthday. As a fitting tribute, 700 volunteer highpointers spread his ashes on every HP in the union. But for a group whose motto is “Keep Klimbin’” (back to that broken typewriter again), that wasn’t enough. By the time Jack’s ashes were fertilizing all 50 state highpoints, members began a quest to “escort Jakk” to the highpoints of other countries. And so it began. At Club HQ there are three large ring binders chronicling Jakk’s adventures around the world.
With our usual morbid sense of humor, we wondered whether there was any Jakk left to spread around. We consulted with Dave Covill, Highpointers lead director, at the recent Outdoor Retailer Show Winter Market in Salt Lake, to learn that – whew! - there were still six film canisters of Jakk remaining (film canisters, like Jakk, being a dying breed).
In fact, Jakk was just recently sprinkled on the third highest peak in Mexico. “He’s a patient guy,” jokes Covill, 56, a petroleum engineer from Evergreen, Colo. “We’ll find other places to leave him. He’s the most widely traveled dead guy I know.”
To date, 249 members have tagged the highpoints in all 50 states. A total of 463, by last count, bagged the HP’s in the lower 48. Covill himself is also attempting to reach the highest point in all 3,141 counties in the U.S. He has notched about 520 so far. Too much time on Covill’s hands, you wonder? At least it gets him outdoors.
Is peak bagging, er, your bag? Learn more at: www.highpointersfoundation.org.
Himalayan Stove Project Nominated for 2014 Outdoor Inspiration Awards
The Himalayan Stove Project earned a top nomination for the prestigious Outdoor Inspiration Awards on January 25, 2014, at the Outdoor Retailer Show in Salt Lake.
HSP is a volunteer-run humanitarian organization that donates and distributes free, clean-burning, fuel-efficient cook stoves to protect the lives and environment of the people of the High Himalayas from deadly and damaging Household Air Pollution. (See EN, January 2012).
Created by adidas Outdoor, the Outdoor Inspiration Awards recognize individuals, groups and companies whose efforts are breaking new ground and encouraging others to participate in outdoor activities. The Himalayan Stove Project received runner-up acknowledgment in the Group category, while the 2014 award winners were Timbuk2 (Company), NOLS: Expedition Denali (Group), and Timmy O’Neil (Individual).
The Himalayan Stove Project is dedicated to neutralizing excessive fuel use, a critical threat to the health of the people living in the trans-Himalayan region and to the natural beauty of the Himalayan environment, according to George Basch, "Chief Cook" at the Himalayan Stove Project.
Basch, with the support of key corporate sponsors such as Eddie Bauer, adidas, Kahtoola, MSR, 1% for the Planet, and Rotary International, founded the Himalayan Stove Project to address the issue of Household Air Pollution (HAP), the “silent killer” that is responsible for four million global deaths each year (more than the mortalities caused by malaria, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, combined).
Beginning in early 2011, the Himalayan Stove Project and its Himalayan partners have installed 1,400 clean-burning, efficient stoves to impoverished homes across remote mountainous regions of Nepal, with an additional 1,500 stoves in-transit for delivery in February 2014. Vastly improving fuel efficiency, the stoves reduce the amount of bio-mass fuel (such as wood or dung) needed for cooking by 80 percent.
For more information: www.himalayanstoveproject.org
EXPEDITION NOTES
Explorers Club Announces Annual Award Winners
The Explorers Club announced its 2014 medalists and award winners late last month. Each will be honored at the organization’s annual dinner on March 15, 2014, at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City. These seven individuals and organizations have all furthered the field of exploration through the innovative use of technology.
• Explorers Medal – Professor Walter H. Munk, widely recognized as the world’s greatest living oceanographer and the father of modern oceanography.
• Buzz Aldrin Quadrennial Space Award – Franklin Chang Diaz, former Director of NASA Advanced Space Propulsion Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center and credited with the invention and patent of the “Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket” (VASIMR), an ion engine that may enable human travel to Mars in just 39 days. Planetary researcher Maria Zuber, recognized for the development of innovative mapping techniques used to study surfaces and interiors of the Earth and solid planets. She is also credited with the discovery of a small metal core in the moon.
• Citation of Merit – The Apollo F-1 Search and Recovery Team, credited with using deep-sea survey and recovery technology to locate and retrieve – from 14,000 feet of water off the Florida coast – the center F-1 engine from the Saturn S-IC rocket used to launch the Apollo 11 mission to the moon in 1969.
• Sweeney Medal – Goes to internationally acclaimed photographers Pat and Rosemarie Keough who are focused on capturing subject matter in locations around the world that include Canada, Africa, Asia and the Polar Regions.
• The Presidents Medal for Exploration and Technology – Hailed as a visionary innovator, Elon Musk is recognized for his development of cutting-edge technology revolutionizing both space exploration and sustainable transportation through his companies SpaceX and Tesla Motors.
For more information: www.explorers.org
Most Beloved Hill in the U.K.
There’s a sort of beauty pageant for walks in the U.K. Bennachie, a range of hills in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, has been chosen by the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) as, “The most loved hill in Britain.”
The honor recognizes the local and regional significance of this iconic landmark whose maximum height is a modest 1,733-ft. Though small in comparison with the nearby Cairngorms, Bennachie stands out from the surrounding landscape and holds plenty of geographical secrets. Starting and finishing at the Bennachie Centre, near Chapel of Garioch, the six-mile route passes through forested lower slopes, out onto heather moorland and up to several of the hill’s granite tors.
Michael Palin, immediate past president of the society, and former member of the comedy group Monty Python says: “All too often we forget that travel doesn’t have to include trains and boats and planes.
“As Discovering Britain shows, some of the world’s most varied, spectacular and accessible landscapes are only a strong pair of boots away. Discovering Britain brings our country to life, beneath your feet.”
For more information: www.discoveringbritain.org
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration.”
– Ansel Adams (1902-1984)
EXPEDITION FOCUS
Lessons from the Great Polar Pitchman
Reprinted from Get Sponsored: A Funding Guide for Explorers, Adventurers, and Would –Be World Travelers (Skyhorse Publishing, 2014)
By Jeff Blumenfeld, editor, ExpeditionNews.com
The process of soliciting funding can be daunting, even if your name is Shackleton. In fact, especially if your name is Shackleton.
Sir Ernest Shackleton (1874–1922), the British polar explorer, wasn’t the Shackleton we all know today when he started out, hat in hand, pitching sponsors. It would take years before he gained renown as the Great Polar Pitchman.
Shackleton was considered by biographer Roland Huntford, “an eloquent, brooding, magnetic, half-poet, half-buccaneer, possessed by romantic visions and intense ambition.”
He hungered for the South Pole, “the last spot of the world,” as he put it, “that counts as worth the striving for though ungilded by aught but adventure.” Little did he realize his polar quest would lead to a historic rescue mission that was a triumph of the human spirit over great adversity.
Shackleton served under Commander Robert F. Scott on the Discovery Expedition (1901–1903), then led his own British Antarctic Expedition in 1907–1909, reaching within a then record 97 miles of the South Pole and discovering the South Magnetic Pole.
Shackleton was feted as a national hero and knighted by Edward VII. Still, he was constantly dogged by financial difficulties. While achieving worldwide acclaim for traveling “furthest south,” he still faced the daunting task of paying off his debts and raising funds for his next expedition. Shackleton believed Antarctica held promise as the path to fame and fortune.
Among explorers, he was the only one who openly promoted his expeditions as a commercial venture, according to Huntford’s book, Shackleton (Atheneum, 1986). Funding would result, he was sure, from telling the story in books, lectures, newspapers, and cinematographs (movies).
To raise money, he lured investors with the promise of another Klondike—a source of minerals and precious stones. By granting advertising rights, he received a free motorcar to reach the South Pole, despite the fact that the automobile was notoriously unreliable even in the best of conditions.
He auctioned off news and picture rights to London newspapers, even earned money by writing jokes for a Fleet Street publication. He turned his expedition ship, the Nimrod, into a museum and charged admission, according to Huntford. Special postage stamps were sold with a cancellation mark from the Antarctic. A handsome, charismatic speaker, Shackleton went on a 20,000-mile lecture tour reading poetry and recounting his exploits using fragile glass lantern slides and a film, the first shot in Antarctica.
An Antarctic mountain was named after London Daily Express journalist and Punch humorist Sir Henry Lucy to curry favorable publicity. Shackleton was also believed to be the first polar explorer to produce a phonograph record. Not surprisingly, he landed a book deal, wrote about his previous expedition, and no doubt was thrilled when it
was published in nine languages.
Shackleton’s skills as a fund-raiser eventually allowed him to depart Plymouth, England, on August 8, 1914, aboard the Endurance for the Trans-Antarctic Expedition, the first-ever attempt to cross the Antarctic continent. When his ship was trapped by ice, it turned into one of the greatest rescues in history.
To learn more about Get Sponsored, log onto:
http://www.amazon.com/Get-Sponsored-Explorers-AdventurersTravelers/dp/1626361371/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1389141889&sr=1-1\
On March 30, 1909, Shackleton recorded an Edison Amberol cylinder entitled, "My South Polar Expedition.” You can hear his voice on
YouTube:
http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=OUTHZ_9tacM
MEDIA MATTERS
In Praise of the New Explorers Museum
Writing in praise of the new Explorers Museum in Charleville Castle, Tullamore, Ireland, about a 90-minute drive from Dublin, is Jamie Bunchuk of Sidetracked.com.
“It’s a slightly sad fact about the world we’ve come to inhabit today that the most grueling tales or most fantastical physical accomplishments are only flicked through briefly on the web browser; one eye on the photography, the other haphazardly skimming the text,” he says.
“As soon as you’re finished, or even before, we click off, onto emails or pictures of cats or whatever. The greatest achievements of adventuring become transient at best, disappearing like a stone to the bottom of the dark depths of our virtually-decimated attention span, with barely a ripple to show they were ever there in the first place.”
He commends the new facility’s “expressed aim to celebrate the very process of exploration itself, in all its forms, both historically and in the modern day.”
Bunchuk continues, “It will also offer a permanency somewhat lacking in the paper-castles of knowledge built on our backlit screens.”
Read the Jan. 31 blog posting here: http://www.sidetracked.com/news/exploration-offline-explorers-museum/
Learn more about the new museum here: www.explorersmuseum.org
Booty Call
The new pirate series Black Sails, appearing on Starz, held a launch party at The Explorers Club on Jan. 14 featuring real pieces of eight and other pirate booty collected by explorer Barry Clifford, considered one of the foremost pirate experts in the world. It was Clifford’s team who located the Whydah off Cape Cod in 1984, the first authenticated pirate ship ever found.
Set in the years before Treasure Island, the series features some of the fictional characters made famous by Robert Louis Stevenson, plus a handful based on historical pirates who operated out of the Bahamas and the Caribbean in the first decades of the 18th century. It’s said to be an authentic take on the era. Nancy deWolf Smith writes in the Wall Street Journal (Jan. 31), “The dirt, the sweat, the squalor and the danger of living among thieves in a world of criminals, they all seem grittily real.”
Attending the dinner was undersea explorer Fabien Cousteau, grandson of Jacques, who commented, “I’ve always dreamed of being a pirate – who hasn’t? Wherever there’s water there will always be pirates. They’ve always existed in some fashion.”
Adds Clifford, “These people were looking for freedom, looking for an equal share of the pie. This bit of history has been misunderstood until now.”
For more information: www.pirates-wanted.com
How to Crowdsource Your Next Expedition
“Until recently, adventurers trying to fund big expeditions took a few select paths: empty a bank account, max out a credit line, or get a corporate sponsor,” writes Zand Martin in the March 2014 issue of Canoe & Kayak magazine. “Today, web-based crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo have added a powerful new option …”
He reports success by the paddling community using this technique. The Nobody’s River Expedition raised $32,295. The Trans-Territorial Canoe Expedition garnered $4,658, and Paddle to the Ocean, a route from Ottawa to Halifax, raised $4,268. But crowdsourcing isn’t failsafe. He reports Kickstarter has a success rate of 44 percent, and Indie GoGo’s is closer to nine percent. Both also charge four to five percent of funds raised.
Martin, who paddled Russia last summer funded in part by IndieGoGo and a Polartec Challenge Grant, advises that the four ingredients to a winning pitch are concept, communication, personal touch, and marketing.
You can purchase the story here: http://www.canoekayak.com/apps/
CLIMBING FOR DOLLARS
Copp-Dash Award Recipients Announced
The Copp-Dash Inspire Award is designed to support small teams with big goals in the high mountains and empower them to bring their adventures back and share their stories of inspiration.
The climbing grant was established in memory of American climbers Jonny Copp and Micah Dash who were killed in an avalanche in China in May 2009, along with filmmaker Wade Johnson.
The 2014 Copp-Dash Inspire Award winners and their objectives are:
• Austin Siadak with Chris Kalman, Matthew Van Biene and Tad McCrea. Ground-up first ascent on 3,000-foot east face of Cerro Catedral in Torres del Paine National Park, Chilean Patagonia.
• Jessa Goebel with Pat Goodman. Free climbing first ascents on the 1,500- to 1,800-foot walls of North Moraine Hill Glacier in the Ragged Range of Canada’s Northwest Territories.
• Erik Bonnett with Max Fisher. First ascent of 2,100-foot spire that forms the southern summit of Kooshdakhaa in the eastern Alaska/northern Yukon Coast Mountains.
• Graham Zimmerman with Clint Helander and Jens Holsten. First ascent of the central buttress of Titanic Peak’s 3,600-foot northwest face in the Revelation Mountains of Alaska.
The awards are sponsored by Black Diamond Equipment, La Sportiva, Mountain Hardwear and Patagonia (with in-kind support from Adventure Film Festival, the American Alpine Club, Jonny Copp Foundation and Sender Films). In addition to providing financial support to expedition teams, the goal of the Copp-Dash Inspire Award is to provide mentoring before and after the expedition to help the climbers bring back and share inspiring multimedia stories of their adventures.
For more information on the Copp-Dash Inspire Award, go to http://coppdashinspireaward.com/ or http://www.americanalpineclub.org/grants/g/5/Copp-Dash-Inspire-Award.
ON THE HORIZON
Visions of Mustang Screening in Stamford, Conn., Mar. 27
A humanitarian mission by ophthalmologists to Nepal’s remote "Forbidden Kingdom" of Mustang in 2011 is the subject of a documentary by Skyship Films that is making the rounds of the film festivals. The film focuses on an expedition of 18 monks, 33 ponies and a rough and tumble medical team traversing the Himalayas to restore eyesight in Nepal's "Forbidden Kingdom" of Mustang.
It was a finalist in the Banff Mountain Film Festival, the Eugene International Film Festival, the International Buddhist Film Festival, an official selection of the Mountain Film Festival in Poland, official selection next month at the Festival International du Film de Sante, in Belgium, and it recently won First Place and Best Overall Film in the Reel Health Film Festival in Australia.
Expedition leader Scott Hamilton will host a free screening on March 27 at 6:30 p.m. at the Ferguson Library in Stamford, Conn. Later this month, Hamilton heads to Santiago de Los Caballos, Dominican Republic, with Ronald Gentile, M.D., head of Operation Restore Vision, and a team of ophthalmologists from the New York Eye & Ear Infirmary, to perform free sight-restoring surgeries at ILAC (Institute For Latin American Concerns) and conduct genetic research on an extremely rare eye and joint disease (spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia) in a village near the border of Haiti.
View the trailer here: www.dooleyintermed.org
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EXPEDITION NEWS is published by Blumenfeld and Associates, Inc., 1281 East Main Street – Box 10, Stamford, CT 06902 USA. Tel. 203 655 1600, editor@expeditionnews.com. Editor/publisher: Jeff Blumenfeld. Assistant editor: Jamie Gribbon. Research editor: Lee Kovel. ©2014 Blumenfeld and Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN: 1526-8977. Subscriptions: US$36/yr. available by e-mail only. Credit card payments accepted through www.paypal.com. Read EXPEDITION NEWS at www.expeditionnews.com. Enjoy the EN blog at www.expeditionnews.blogspot.com.
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Saturday, January 11, 2014
Expedition News - Jan. 2014 - Explorers Museum Opens in Ireland
January 2014 – Volume Twenty-One, Number One
EXPEDITION NEWS, founded in 1994, is the monthly review of significant expeditions, research projects and newsworthy adventures. It is distributed online to media representatives, corporate sponsors, educators, research librarians, explorers, environmentalists, and outdoor enthusiasts. This forum on exploration covers projects that stimulate, motivate and educate.
CIRCLING THE GOLDEN MOUNTAINS
At the northern edge of the vast endoheic basins of Central Asia rises the last of the great mountain complexes radiating northeast from the subcontinent: the Altai, or "Golden Mountains.”
This range lies in the heart of Asia, at the junction of steppe, desert, and taiga, and constitutes one of the most pristine montane (i.e. mountainous) ecosystems on Earth. Alexander B. Martin, 27, of Kensington, Conn., and his three-person team plan to tell the story of this transboundary region as they follow the people and landscape of the Altai by ski, foot, and bicycle this winter and spring.
The Circling the Golden Mountains project is an attempt to circumnavigate the Altai Mountains on a 2,486-mi./4000 km route that runs through Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, and Russia. The team intends to cycle around and through the range in a large counterclockwise direction, carrying skis on their bicycles and executing several dedicated multi-day ski tours in each country, with peak ascents planned along the way.
The project will also include citizen-science initiatives through Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation (www.adventurersandscientists.org) and support of the work of the World Wildlife Fund (WFF) Mongolia and WWF Russia.
The team is currently seeking additional partnerships, sponsorship, and financial support. Voile and GoLite have provided gear, as the team awaits the results of several grant applications. (For more information: zanderbmartin@gmail.com).
EXPEDITION UPDATE
Kiteboaders Achieve Record Atlantic Crossing
Six kiteboarders, including American Eric Pequeno, 30, of West Bloomfield, Mich., have completed the first ever non-stop kiteboard crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, a one-way trip of well over 4,000 miles. The team departed Nov. 20, 2013, from Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands and crossed the Atlantic Ocean en route to the Blue Haven Resort and Marina in the Turks and Caicos. They reached their destination on Dec. 17 after 27 days and nights of travel. The HTC Atlantic Kite Challenge was the first-ever kiteboarding relay of its kind crossing the Atlantic Ocean.
The project was the brainchild of Netherlands-based Filippo van Hellenberg Hubar, founder of the Enable Passion Foundation (www.enablepassion.com), and a member of the team who participated in the crossing.
“This is a landmark of human achievement,” said Caroline van Scheltinga, CEO and chair of Waterloo Investment Holdings Limited, the holding company for Blue Haven Resort and Marina. “The successful ocean crossing demonstrates the power of human passion and ingenuity, working as a team in harmony with nature.”
CNN.com coverage of the feat can be seen here: edition.cnn.com/2014/01/02/sport/kite-surfing-atlantic-first/index.html?hpt=isp_t2
Free at Last
The Australasian Antarctic Expedition we wrote about last month broke free early this month from the Antarctic ice that had trapped their ship off the continent's coast.
Cracks in the ice allowed the Russian research ship Akademik Shokalskiy to escape the ice field where it had been stranded for two weeks, Australia's Maritime Safety Authority said.
The Chinese icebreaker Xue Long, which had gotten stuck in the ice during an attempt to extract the Russian ship, broke free about an hour later, officials said.
The blue-hulled Russian ship was surrounded by such dense and extensive pack ice that it could not move, and vessels designed to break through ice could not get near. Images from the people being rescued showed them smiling as they walked single file across the ice to a landing area that had been cleared by passengers and crew members to enable the helicopter to touch down. Other images on the Internet showed crew members hauling sleds with luggage.
The Akademik Shokalskiy had been trapped in unusually deep ice since Christmas Eve with scientists, journalists, tourists and crew members from the Australasian Antarctic Expedition on board. A helicopter ferried the ship's 52 passengers to the Australian icebreaker Aurora Australis, which at press time was ferrying them to Australia's Casey Station on Antarctica.
The ship had set sail from Bluff, New Zealand, on Dec. 8, embarking on a planned month long voyage to study changes to the environment of East Antarctica since an Australian geologist, Douglas Mawson, surveyed the region a century ago.
EXPEDITION NOTES
The Explorers Museum Plans Summer Opening in Ireland
There are collections of “explorabilia” at the Royal Geographical Society, American Museum of Natural History, and elsewhere, but there’s no single museum dedicated to the field of exploration. Until now.
This month, The Explorers Museum in Charleville Castle, Tullamore, Ireland, about a 90-min. drive from Dublin, announced plans to open this summer.
The founders of the organization are Lorie Karnath, 37th president of The Explorers Club, and Tim Lavery, director in charge of the World Explorers Bureau – The Global Adventure Speakers Agency. The not-for-profit venture will serve to promote exploration through recognition of significant expeditions and discoveries. It will also curate special exhibits featuring feats and historical achievements.
As an explorer herself Karnath, a resident of the New York Hudson Valley, and Berlin, believes that exploration revolves around the words, “explore, discover, share, preserve, sustain,” and that “the museum will serve as an important vehicle for sharing, preserving and sustaining accumulated knowledge and will help ensure that individual and team discoveries are not forgotten.”
Stated Lavery, “Protecting and increasing the diffusion of knowledge of explorers past and present will serve to inspire a new generation of explorers.” The renowned Charleville Castle will serve both as the museum’s expedition space as well as its global expedition base for launching new expedition projects.
The castle was once the home of the famed explorer/naturalist Charles Howard-Bury who among his many accomplishments is credited as having paved the way to Everest leading the Mount Everest Reconnaissance Expedition in 1920. An opening exhibit featuring the achievements of Howard-Bury and other noted explorers is slated for summer 2014.
Century-old Expedition Photos Revealed
The story of the Ross Sea Party is one of unlikely survival. Crew members from the ill-fated 1915 Antarctic expedition narrowly survived for more than three years after their ship, the Aurora, drifted out to sea during a blizzard, leaving them stranded on ice and forced to inhabit an abandoned hut. No one has seen what those lost years were like, until now.
New Zealand’s Antarctic Heritage Trust has brought to life 22 unprocessed photographic negatives that miraculously survived in that hut for nearly 100 years. The images were released after painstaking restoration work.
The negatives were found earlier this year by conservators who were working on a project to restore historic expedition sites in Antarctica, specifically the supply huts used by the Ross Sea Party. The box of negatives was discovered in a solid block of ice inside a photographer's darkroom at the base at Cape Evans where the members of the Ross Tea Party took refuge, according to the Antarctic Heritage Trust.
See the images here: http://www.nzaht.org/AHT/antarctic-photos/
Climbers Keeping an Eye on the Sochi Olympics
Next month, about 80 athletes will participate in the Sochi Olympics ice climbing “cultural” event. But the athletes, including just three Americans, won’t be competing for medals. Instead, it’ll be an opportunity for those passionate about the sport to showcase ice climbing and dry tooling (climbing with ice axes on rock and plastic walls instead of ice) to the world.
With any luck, spectators and Olympic committee members will be wowed enough to consider it as an official sport in coming years. Like traditional rock climbing, ice tooling is exceptionally gymnastic and physical. Said Aaron Montgomery of Broomfield, Colo., ice climbing “requires more intuition. You can’t feel the holds. You have to feel them with your tools.”
Here’s One Way to Join the Undead
A man attending a Halloween night zombie-rock-themed concert at View House Bar & Restaurant in Denver was hospitalized (with non life-threatening injuries) after he climbed over the railing on the top deck, and then tried to jump onto an adjoining roof. He missed, and fell onto some wooden scaffolding about 14 feet below. (We hate when that happens). Here’s the kicker: He had come dressed as a mountaineer.
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Auto racing, bull fighting, and mountain climbing are the only real sports … all others are games.”
– Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
EXPEDITION FOCUS
See the World and Help Others
By Sarah W. Papsun
Greenwich, Conn.
Editor’s Note: – Not every adventure or expedition needs to be made in the name of science, research or discovery. One way to see the world – and receive funding for it – is to design a trip that’s bigger than yourself. Sarah W. Papsun, a marketing associate at Axiom International Investors in Greenwich, Conn., has figured out a way to travel while helping others. At the tender age of 33, Papsun has already traveled to places most people only dream about …. and has a rock band in Paris named after her (we kid you not). EN asked her to share her fund-raising advice for would-be world travelers.
1. Start an Online Fundraising Page
First, when I conceive of a project, I log onto First Giving (http://info.firstgiving.com/individuals/how-it-works/) to start the fund-raising process.
It helps to have a tax exempt status, such as a 501(c)3, or at least a tax i.d. (EIN).
When collecting funds and money, it’s important to tell people clearly what the organization is, and how the funds are getting to the people you are helping. Transparency is critical. You want everything to be clear and simple. When accepting donations, you want them to be able to write you a check or print out an online donation thru First Giving for their taxes or tax-deductible record keeping.
Make up business cards you can pass out with your fundraising information, website, Twitter account, email and telephone on it. It helps when meeting new people. Be able to strike up a conversation with anyone who asks you about your project and pass them a card so they can make a donation later.
2. Use Social Media
Each day blast out a Facebook, Tweet or email asking friends to “rock your world” or “make your day” and donate just $5 dollars. If 20 friends do that, these small amounts will really add up.
3. Re-sell Popular Snacks to Raise Money
Another way I raised money was selling chocolate from Hershey Fundraising (www.hersheys.com/fundraising/). I’ve also gone to Costco to buy snacks in bulk like granola bars, Clif bars and candy bars to re-sell. Sometimes it seems like making a dollar here or there will take forever, but I ensure you, it goes fast if you stay at it. I even set up a “lemonade stand with a purpose” in the summer by the train station, and people really started to take notice of my cause and made donations.
4. Host Home-cooked Dinners
I used to host a wine, cheese and pasta dinner night at my house, where I would cook for my friends and at the end of the dinner I would place a pot on the table and asked if friends would donate “what they felt was in their heart” or what they thought that dinner would have cost if they ate at a restaurant.
I ensured my guests they could know that 100% of their donation would go to the charity, as I was going to go meet the people in need, work with the cause in the country I was visiting, and deliver the funds personally. At the dinner I would talk about why the project meant so much to me and answer any questions people had. You have to eat, breathe and sleep your chosen charity and project to make it happen.
5. Plan a “Top Less” Car Wash
Everyone needs a clean car, especially in the spring to wash off road salt. Plan a “Top Less” car wash – a car wash were you don’t wash the top of the cars. Identify the charity on signs you place all over town to raise awareness – and funds – for your trip.
Sarah Winters Papsun has been to every continent, except Antarctica, almost all 50 states and has traveled to 40 countries and counting. Papsun works for a hedge fund in Greenwich, Conn., and in her spare time is also a Rotarian, cellist, and is actively involved with the Noroton (Conn.) Presbyterian Church’s Mission Team. She completed the Semester at Sea study aboard program and has a marketing degree from Quinnipiac University, which has served her well in her professional life and helping fund-raise for charities. She also is a huge fan of Sarah W. Papsun, the Parisian rock group named after her by a band member. Sarah is happiest when helping others and believes, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” - Mahatma Gandhi
Not kidding about that band. Here’s the link to the other Sarah W. Papsun:
http://www.mama-event.com/en/festival/sarah-w-papsun.html
For more advice, contact Papsun at SarahWorldTraveler@yahoo.com, www.papsun.com/
CLIMBING FOR DOLLARS
Lyman Spitzer Awards Announced
The American Alpine Club announced its 2014 Lyman Spitzer Cutting Edge Awards. This grant, made possible by the support of Lyman Spitzer Jr., promotes state-of-the-art, cutting-edge climbing through funding of small, lightweight climbing teams attempting bold first ascents or difficult repeats of the most challenging routes in the world.
This year’s winners are:
• Alan Rousseau, Tino Villanueva: The second ascent of Tengi Ragi Tau (Nepal) via its unclimbed west face.
• Chris Wright, Scott Adamson: The first ascent of the 6,000-ft. North Pillar of Teng Kangpoche (Khumbu Himal, Nepal).
• Jared Vilhauer, Seth Timpano, Tim Dittmann: The unclimbed Barnaj II (Kishtwar India) via its unattempted north face.
• Kyle Dempster, Urban Novak, Hayden Kennedy: A new route up Gasherbrum 4 (Pakistan Karakoram) via the west-facing “Shining Wall” known for its intense difficulty and beauty.
The AAC offers numerous grants with differing criteria, from the locally administered Live Your Dream grants, to Mountain Fellowship grants for climbers under the age of 25, as well as Cornerstone Conservation Grants that keep local climbing areas healthy. For more information: www. americanalpineclub.org/grants.
MEDIA MATTERS
“Jolly Tourism” – Are Research and Tourism a Toxic Mix?
A botched expedition to Antarctica (see related story) that left two ships stranded in sea ice has disrupted international scientific research programs while raising questions over the future of tourism on the frozen continent as well as multimillion-dollar rescue operations, according to a Jan. 7 story by John Zubrzycki in the Christian Science Monitor.
Chris Turney, the leader of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, was forced to defend his group from accusations that the voyage to Antarctica had been a poorly planned tourist trip with little scientific value.
"The (expedition) is not a jolly tourist trip as some have claimed," he told The Observer newspaper, adding that bad luck and not human error had caused the ship to get stuck. "There was nothing to suggest that this event was imminent."
He also rejected suggestions that the stranding was related to climate change and insisted that the expedition was carrying out vital scientific research focusing on marine biology and oceanography.
Anthony Bergin, an Antarctica specialist and deputy director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, says the stranding raises important issues about how such "pseudo scientific" expeditions are conducted.
"Combining tourism with science inevitably creates commercial tensions, and the demands of tourists always win," says Dr. Bergin. "After this incident, the guidelines for tourism in Antarctica will need to be revisited or tightened up."
Read the story here:
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2014/0107/Antarctica-expedition-Are-research-and-tourism-a-toxic-mix
Laugh it Up
“Providing comic relief is never more important than when you’re in the middle of nowhere,” writes the Wall Street Journal’s Ralph Gardner in his Dec. 12 profile of Alison Levine, 47, explorer and motivational speaker. Levine accomplished the Adventure Grand Slam, the Seven Summits plus ski treks to both the North and South Poles.
“Throughout my life when I had things that were painful I learned to suck it up,” she tells Gardner. “That’s one reason I make a good expedition tentmate,” she adds. “Who wants to be in a tent with someone complaining?”
Levine is author of On The Edge (Business Plus), a book due out this month about the leadership skills and insights she developed during her grand slam quest.
EXPEDITION MARKETING
Land Rover Helps Retrace Scott Expedition
The most poignant journey of the golden age of Edwardian exploration remains unfinished to this day. But not for long. This Christmas, British Land Rover Global Ambassador Ben Saunders and fellow Brit and teammate Tarka L’Herpiniere, celebrated two months on the ice in Antarctica. Retracing Captain Scott’s ill-fated 1910-12 Terra Nova expedition, the two have reached the South Pole having crossed the Ross Ice Shelf, Beardmore Glacier and the Antarctic Plateau.
At press time, Saunders and L’Herpiniere were heading back towards the coast and Scott’s Hut, retracing their steps, and will again take on Beardmore Glacier, and pass the Ross Ice Shelf, hoping to complete their journey by mid-February. To prepare, they undertook an intense 12-month physical training program at which time Saunders’ Land Rover Discovery played a hand in taking them to hard to reach training sites in the U.K., Europe and Greenland.
Other sponsors include Intel and Hilleberg Tents.
For more information: www.scottexpedition.com
The Watch That Rocks
We applaud any company that uses exploration imagery to sell a product or service. If adventure marketing campaigns like this caught on more, it would be far easier for explorers to generate sponsorship funding. Thus we were pleased to see free solo record holder Alex Honnold, who solo-climbed Yosemite Triple Crown and ascended over 7,000 feet in less than 19 hours, appearing in a New York Times Style Magazine advertisement for Ball Watch USA.
The text reads in part, “With no ropes and protective gear, there is simply no room for error. Which is why a dependable timepiece like Ball Watch is so important in an environment that features truly adverse conditions.
“The watch that once ran America’s railroads now helps the world’s explorers keep time. There is no timepiece that is as rugged and dependable.”
We were about to drop $2,200 on the new Engineer Hydrocarbon Spacemaster Glow Automatic, but our perfectly fine $20 Timex Expedition watch told us it was time to turn the page.
EXPEDITION INK
Get Sponsored
EN’s second adventure marketing book launched this month titled, Get Sponsored: A Funding Guide for Explorers, Adventurers and Would-Be World Travelers (Skyhorse Publishing, 2014). While it’s certainly tempting to write a review of our own book, sheer modesty suggests we should let our readers judge for themselves. Get Sponsored is a renamed, rebranded and completely updated version of our first book called You Want to Go Where: How to Get Someone to Pay for the Trip of Yours Dreams, also published by Skyhorse.
Michael Kodas, author of High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed,” blurbs, “For athletes who are bold enough to take on the world’s most difficult and dangerous mountains and oceans, but daunted by the task of getting media attention and funding to pursue their dreams, Get Sponsored is required reading.”
For more information:
http://www.amazon.com/Get-Sponsored-Explorers-Adventurers-Travelers/dp/1626361371/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1389141889&sr=1-1
EXPEDITION CLASSIFIEDS
Advertise in Expedition News – For just 50 cents a word, you can reach an estimated 10,000 readers of America’s only monthly newsletter celebrating the world of expeditions on land, in space, and beneath the sea. Join us as we take a sometimes irreverent look at the people and projects making Expedition News. Frequency discounts are available. (For more information: blumassoc@aol.com).
EXPEDITION NEWS is published by Blumenfeld and Associates, Inc., 1281 East Main Street – Box 10, Stamford, CT 06902 USA. Tel. 203 655 1600, editor@expeditionnews.com. Editor/publisher: Jeff Blumenfeld. Assistant editor: Jamie Gribbon. Research editor: Lee Kovel. ©2014 Blumenfeld and Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN: 1526-8977. Subscriptions: US$36/yr. available by e-mail only. Credit card payments accepted through www.paypal.com. Read EXPEDITION NEWS at www.expeditionnews.com. Enjoy the EN blog at www.expeditionnews.blogspot.com.
EXPEDITION NEWS, founded in 1994, is the monthly review of significant expeditions, research projects and newsworthy adventures. It is distributed online to media representatives, corporate sponsors, educators, research librarians, explorers, environmentalists, and outdoor enthusiasts. This forum on exploration covers projects that stimulate, motivate and educate.
CIRCLING THE GOLDEN MOUNTAINS
At the northern edge of the vast endoheic basins of Central Asia rises the last of the great mountain complexes radiating northeast from the subcontinent: the Altai, or "Golden Mountains.”
This range lies in the heart of Asia, at the junction of steppe, desert, and taiga, and constitutes one of the most pristine montane (i.e. mountainous) ecosystems on Earth. Alexander B. Martin, 27, of Kensington, Conn., and his three-person team plan to tell the story of this transboundary region as they follow the people and landscape of the Altai by ski, foot, and bicycle this winter and spring.
The Circling the Golden Mountains project is an attempt to circumnavigate the Altai Mountains on a 2,486-mi./4000 km route that runs through Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, and Russia. The team intends to cycle around and through the range in a large counterclockwise direction, carrying skis on their bicycles and executing several dedicated multi-day ski tours in each country, with peak ascents planned along the way.
The project will also include citizen-science initiatives through Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation (www.adventurersandscientists.org) and support of the work of the World Wildlife Fund (WFF) Mongolia and WWF Russia.
The team is currently seeking additional partnerships, sponsorship, and financial support. Voile and GoLite have provided gear, as the team awaits the results of several grant applications. (For more information: zanderbmartin@gmail.com).
EXPEDITION UPDATE
Kiteboaders Achieve Record Atlantic Crossing
Six kiteboarders, including American Eric Pequeno, 30, of West Bloomfield, Mich., have completed the first ever non-stop kiteboard crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, a one-way trip of well over 4,000 miles. The team departed Nov. 20, 2013, from Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands and crossed the Atlantic Ocean en route to the Blue Haven Resort and Marina in the Turks and Caicos. They reached their destination on Dec. 17 after 27 days and nights of travel. The HTC Atlantic Kite Challenge was the first-ever kiteboarding relay of its kind crossing the Atlantic Ocean.
The project was the brainchild of Netherlands-based Filippo van Hellenberg Hubar, founder of the Enable Passion Foundation (www.enablepassion.com), and a member of the team who participated in the crossing.
“This is a landmark of human achievement,” said Caroline van Scheltinga, CEO and chair of Waterloo Investment Holdings Limited, the holding company for Blue Haven Resort and Marina. “The successful ocean crossing demonstrates the power of human passion and ingenuity, working as a team in harmony with nature.”
CNN.com coverage of the feat can be seen here: edition.cnn.com/2014/01/02/sport/kite-surfing-atlantic-first/index.html?hpt=isp_t2
Free at Last
The Australasian Antarctic Expedition we wrote about last month broke free early this month from the Antarctic ice that had trapped their ship off the continent's coast.
Cracks in the ice allowed the Russian research ship Akademik Shokalskiy to escape the ice field where it had been stranded for two weeks, Australia's Maritime Safety Authority said.
The Chinese icebreaker Xue Long, which had gotten stuck in the ice during an attempt to extract the Russian ship, broke free about an hour later, officials said.
The blue-hulled Russian ship was surrounded by such dense and extensive pack ice that it could not move, and vessels designed to break through ice could not get near. Images from the people being rescued showed them smiling as they walked single file across the ice to a landing area that had been cleared by passengers and crew members to enable the helicopter to touch down. Other images on the Internet showed crew members hauling sleds with luggage.
The Akademik Shokalskiy had been trapped in unusually deep ice since Christmas Eve with scientists, journalists, tourists and crew members from the Australasian Antarctic Expedition on board. A helicopter ferried the ship's 52 passengers to the Australian icebreaker Aurora Australis, which at press time was ferrying them to Australia's Casey Station on Antarctica.
The ship had set sail from Bluff, New Zealand, on Dec. 8, embarking on a planned month long voyage to study changes to the environment of East Antarctica since an Australian geologist, Douglas Mawson, surveyed the region a century ago.
EXPEDITION NOTES
The Explorers Museum Plans Summer Opening in Ireland
There are collections of “explorabilia” at the Royal Geographical Society, American Museum of Natural History, and elsewhere, but there’s no single museum dedicated to the field of exploration. Until now.
This month, The Explorers Museum in Charleville Castle, Tullamore, Ireland, about a 90-min. drive from Dublin, announced plans to open this summer.
The founders of the organization are Lorie Karnath, 37th president of The Explorers Club, and Tim Lavery, director in charge of the World Explorers Bureau – The Global Adventure Speakers Agency. The not-for-profit venture will serve to promote exploration through recognition of significant expeditions and discoveries. It will also curate special exhibits featuring feats and historical achievements.
As an explorer herself Karnath, a resident of the New York Hudson Valley, and Berlin, believes that exploration revolves around the words, “explore, discover, share, preserve, sustain,” and that “the museum will serve as an important vehicle for sharing, preserving and sustaining accumulated knowledge and will help ensure that individual and team discoveries are not forgotten.”
Stated Lavery, “Protecting and increasing the diffusion of knowledge of explorers past and present will serve to inspire a new generation of explorers.” The renowned Charleville Castle will serve both as the museum’s expedition space as well as its global expedition base for launching new expedition projects.
The castle was once the home of the famed explorer/naturalist Charles Howard-Bury who among his many accomplishments is credited as having paved the way to Everest leading the Mount Everest Reconnaissance Expedition in 1920. An opening exhibit featuring the achievements of Howard-Bury and other noted explorers is slated for summer 2014.
Century-old Expedition Photos Revealed
The story of the Ross Sea Party is one of unlikely survival. Crew members from the ill-fated 1915 Antarctic expedition narrowly survived for more than three years after their ship, the Aurora, drifted out to sea during a blizzard, leaving them stranded on ice and forced to inhabit an abandoned hut. No one has seen what those lost years were like, until now.
New Zealand’s Antarctic Heritage Trust has brought to life 22 unprocessed photographic negatives that miraculously survived in that hut for nearly 100 years. The images were released after painstaking restoration work.
The negatives were found earlier this year by conservators who were working on a project to restore historic expedition sites in Antarctica, specifically the supply huts used by the Ross Sea Party. The box of negatives was discovered in a solid block of ice inside a photographer's darkroom at the base at Cape Evans where the members of the Ross Tea Party took refuge, according to the Antarctic Heritage Trust.
See the images here: http://www.nzaht.org/AHT/antarctic-photos/
Climbers Keeping an Eye on the Sochi Olympics
Next month, about 80 athletes will participate in the Sochi Olympics ice climbing “cultural” event. But the athletes, including just three Americans, won’t be competing for medals. Instead, it’ll be an opportunity for those passionate about the sport to showcase ice climbing and dry tooling (climbing with ice axes on rock and plastic walls instead of ice) to the world.
With any luck, spectators and Olympic committee members will be wowed enough to consider it as an official sport in coming years. Like traditional rock climbing, ice tooling is exceptionally gymnastic and physical. Said Aaron Montgomery of Broomfield, Colo., ice climbing “requires more intuition. You can’t feel the holds. You have to feel them with your tools.”
Here’s One Way to Join the Undead
A man attending a Halloween night zombie-rock-themed concert at View House Bar & Restaurant in Denver was hospitalized (with non life-threatening injuries) after he climbed over the railing on the top deck, and then tried to jump onto an adjoining roof. He missed, and fell onto some wooden scaffolding about 14 feet below. (We hate when that happens). Here’s the kicker: He had come dressed as a mountaineer.
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Auto racing, bull fighting, and mountain climbing are the only real sports … all others are games.”
– Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
EXPEDITION FOCUS
See the World and Help Others
By Sarah W. Papsun
Greenwich, Conn.
Editor’s Note: – Not every adventure or expedition needs to be made in the name of science, research or discovery. One way to see the world – and receive funding for it – is to design a trip that’s bigger than yourself. Sarah W. Papsun, a marketing associate at Axiom International Investors in Greenwich, Conn., has figured out a way to travel while helping others. At the tender age of 33, Papsun has already traveled to places most people only dream about …. and has a rock band in Paris named after her (we kid you not). EN asked her to share her fund-raising advice for would-be world travelers.
1. Start an Online Fundraising Page
First, when I conceive of a project, I log onto First Giving (http://info.firstgiving.com/individuals/how-it-works/) to start the fund-raising process.
It helps to have a tax exempt status, such as a 501(c)3, or at least a tax i.d. (EIN).
When collecting funds and money, it’s important to tell people clearly what the organization is, and how the funds are getting to the people you are helping. Transparency is critical. You want everything to be clear and simple. When accepting donations, you want them to be able to write you a check or print out an online donation thru First Giving for their taxes or tax-deductible record keeping.
Make up business cards you can pass out with your fundraising information, website, Twitter account, email and telephone on it. It helps when meeting new people. Be able to strike up a conversation with anyone who asks you about your project and pass them a card so they can make a donation later.
2. Use Social Media
Each day blast out a Facebook, Tweet or email asking friends to “rock your world” or “make your day” and donate just $5 dollars. If 20 friends do that, these small amounts will really add up.
3. Re-sell Popular Snacks to Raise Money
Another way I raised money was selling chocolate from Hershey Fundraising (www.hersheys.com/fundraising/). I’ve also gone to Costco to buy snacks in bulk like granola bars, Clif bars and candy bars to re-sell. Sometimes it seems like making a dollar here or there will take forever, but I ensure you, it goes fast if you stay at it. I even set up a “lemonade stand with a purpose” in the summer by the train station, and people really started to take notice of my cause and made donations.
4. Host Home-cooked Dinners
I used to host a wine, cheese and pasta dinner night at my house, where I would cook for my friends and at the end of the dinner I would place a pot on the table and asked if friends would donate “what they felt was in their heart” or what they thought that dinner would have cost if they ate at a restaurant.
I ensured my guests they could know that 100% of their donation would go to the charity, as I was going to go meet the people in need, work with the cause in the country I was visiting, and deliver the funds personally. At the dinner I would talk about why the project meant so much to me and answer any questions people had. You have to eat, breathe and sleep your chosen charity and project to make it happen.
5. Plan a “Top Less” Car Wash
Everyone needs a clean car, especially in the spring to wash off road salt. Plan a “Top Less” car wash – a car wash were you don’t wash the top of the cars. Identify the charity on signs you place all over town to raise awareness – and funds – for your trip.
Sarah Winters Papsun has been to every continent, except Antarctica, almost all 50 states and has traveled to 40 countries and counting. Papsun works for a hedge fund in Greenwich, Conn., and in her spare time is also a Rotarian, cellist, and is actively involved with the Noroton (Conn.) Presbyterian Church’s Mission Team. She completed the Semester at Sea study aboard program and has a marketing degree from Quinnipiac University, which has served her well in her professional life and helping fund-raise for charities. She also is a huge fan of Sarah W. Papsun, the Parisian rock group named after her by a band member. Sarah is happiest when helping others and believes, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” - Mahatma Gandhi
Not kidding about that band. Here’s the link to the other Sarah W. Papsun:
http://www.mama-event.com/en/festival/sarah-w-papsun.html
For more advice, contact Papsun at SarahWorldTraveler@yahoo.com, www.papsun.com/
CLIMBING FOR DOLLARS
Lyman Spitzer Awards Announced
The American Alpine Club announced its 2014 Lyman Spitzer Cutting Edge Awards. This grant, made possible by the support of Lyman Spitzer Jr., promotes state-of-the-art, cutting-edge climbing through funding of small, lightweight climbing teams attempting bold first ascents or difficult repeats of the most challenging routes in the world.
This year’s winners are:
• Alan Rousseau, Tino Villanueva: The second ascent of Tengi Ragi Tau (Nepal) via its unclimbed west face.
• Chris Wright, Scott Adamson: The first ascent of the 6,000-ft. North Pillar of Teng Kangpoche (Khumbu Himal, Nepal).
• Jared Vilhauer, Seth Timpano, Tim Dittmann: The unclimbed Barnaj II (Kishtwar India) via its unattempted north face.
• Kyle Dempster, Urban Novak, Hayden Kennedy: A new route up Gasherbrum 4 (Pakistan Karakoram) via the west-facing “Shining Wall” known for its intense difficulty and beauty.
The AAC offers numerous grants with differing criteria, from the locally administered Live Your Dream grants, to Mountain Fellowship grants for climbers under the age of 25, as well as Cornerstone Conservation Grants that keep local climbing areas healthy. For more information: www. americanalpineclub.org/grants.
MEDIA MATTERS
“Jolly Tourism” – Are Research and Tourism a Toxic Mix?
A botched expedition to Antarctica (see related story) that left two ships stranded in sea ice has disrupted international scientific research programs while raising questions over the future of tourism on the frozen continent as well as multimillion-dollar rescue operations, according to a Jan. 7 story by John Zubrzycki in the Christian Science Monitor.
Chris Turney, the leader of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, was forced to defend his group from accusations that the voyage to Antarctica had been a poorly planned tourist trip with little scientific value.
"The (expedition) is not a jolly tourist trip as some have claimed," he told The Observer newspaper, adding that bad luck and not human error had caused the ship to get stuck. "There was nothing to suggest that this event was imminent."
He also rejected suggestions that the stranding was related to climate change and insisted that the expedition was carrying out vital scientific research focusing on marine biology and oceanography.
Anthony Bergin, an Antarctica specialist and deputy director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, says the stranding raises important issues about how such "pseudo scientific" expeditions are conducted.
"Combining tourism with science inevitably creates commercial tensions, and the demands of tourists always win," says Dr. Bergin. "After this incident, the guidelines for tourism in Antarctica will need to be revisited or tightened up."
Read the story here:
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2014/0107/Antarctica-expedition-Are-research-and-tourism-a-toxic-mix
Laugh it Up
“Providing comic relief is never more important than when you’re in the middle of nowhere,” writes the Wall Street Journal’s Ralph Gardner in his Dec. 12 profile of Alison Levine, 47, explorer and motivational speaker. Levine accomplished the Adventure Grand Slam, the Seven Summits plus ski treks to both the North and South Poles.
“Throughout my life when I had things that were painful I learned to suck it up,” she tells Gardner. “That’s one reason I make a good expedition tentmate,” she adds. “Who wants to be in a tent with someone complaining?”
Levine is author of On The Edge (Business Plus), a book due out this month about the leadership skills and insights she developed during her grand slam quest.
EXPEDITION MARKETING
Land Rover Helps Retrace Scott Expedition
The most poignant journey of the golden age of Edwardian exploration remains unfinished to this day. But not for long. This Christmas, British Land Rover Global Ambassador Ben Saunders and fellow Brit and teammate Tarka L’Herpiniere, celebrated two months on the ice in Antarctica. Retracing Captain Scott’s ill-fated 1910-12 Terra Nova expedition, the two have reached the South Pole having crossed the Ross Ice Shelf, Beardmore Glacier and the Antarctic Plateau.
At press time, Saunders and L’Herpiniere were heading back towards the coast and Scott’s Hut, retracing their steps, and will again take on Beardmore Glacier, and pass the Ross Ice Shelf, hoping to complete their journey by mid-February. To prepare, they undertook an intense 12-month physical training program at which time Saunders’ Land Rover Discovery played a hand in taking them to hard to reach training sites in the U.K., Europe and Greenland.
Other sponsors include Intel and Hilleberg Tents.
For more information: www.scottexpedition.com
The Watch That Rocks
We applaud any company that uses exploration imagery to sell a product or service. If adventure marketing campaigns like this caught on more, it would be far easier for explorers to generate sponsorship funding. Thus we were pleased to see free solo record holder Alex Honnold, who solo-climbed Yosemite Triple Crown and ascended over 7,000 feet in less than 19 hours, appearing in a New York Times Style Magazine advertisement for Ball Watch USA.
The text reads in part, “With no ropes and protective gear, there is simply no room for error. Which is why a dependable timepiece like Ball Watch is so important in an environment that features truly adverse conditions.
“The watch that once ran America’s railroads now helps the world’s explorers keep time. There is no timepiece that is as rugged and dependable.”
We were about to drop $2,200 on the new Engineer Hydrocarbon Spacemaster Glow Automatic, but our perfectly fine $20 Timex Expedition watch told us it was time to turn the page.
EXPEDITION INK
Get Sponsored
EN’s second adventure marketing book launched this month titled, Get Sponsored: A Funding Guide for Explorers, Adventurers and Would-Be World Travelers (Skyhorse Publishing, 2014). While it’s certainly tempting to write a review of our own book, sheer modesty suggests we should let our readers judge for themselves. Get Sponsored is a renamed, rebranded and completely updated version of our first book called You Want to Go Where: How to Get Someone to Pay for the Trip of Yours Dreams, also published by Skyhorse.
Michael Kodas, author of High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed,” blurbs, “For athletes who are bold enough to take on the world’s most difficult and dangerous mountains and oceans, but daunted by the task of getting media attention and funding to pursue their dreams, Get Sponsored is required reading.”
For more information:
http://www.amazon.com/Get-Sponsored-Explorers-Adventurers-Travelers/dp/1626361371/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1389141889&sr=1-1
EXPEDITION CLASSIFIEDS
Advertise in Expedition News – For just 50 cents a word, you can reach an estimated 10,000 readers of America’s only monthly newsletter celebrating the world of expeditions on land, in space, and beneath the sea. Join us as we take a sometimes irreverent look at the people and projects making Expedition News. Frequency discounts are available. (For more information: blumassoc@aol.com).
EXPEDITION NEWS is published by Blumenfeld and Associates, Inc., 1281 East Main Street – Box 10, Stamford, CT 06902 USA. Tel. 203 655 1600, editor@expeditionnews.com. Editor/publisher: Jeff Blumenfeld. Assistant editor: Jamie Gribbon. Research editor: Lee Kovel. ©2014 Blumenfeld and Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN: 1526-8977. Subscriptions: US$36/yr. available by e-mail only. Credit card payments accepted through www.paypal.com. Read EXPEDITION NEWS at www.expeditionnews.com. Enjoy the EN blog at www.expeditionnews.blogspot.com.
Saturday, December 7, 2013
December 2013
SNORKELING THE CANADIAN ARCTIC
Susan Eaton, a Calgary-based geologist, geophysicist, journalist and Arctic and Antarctic snorkeler, is leading two all-female extreme snorkel relays to the Canadian Arctic, in 2014 and 2016. “The purpose of the proof of concept expedition (July 2014) and the larger Northwest Passage snorkel relay (summer 2016), is to raise awareness of disappearing sea ice and climate change in the Arctic and to engage Inuit women and girls in building sustainable communities, she told ExplorersWeb.
In July 2016, the all-female SEDNA Expedition, named for Sedna, the Goddess of the Sea and the mother of marine mammals, will embark on a three-month journey, snorkeling over 1,864-mi./3,000 km through Arctic seas from Pond Inlet, Nunavut, to Inuvik, Northwest Territories. The 10 polar snorkelers – supported by two mother ships, each equipped with Zodiac boats – will create world-wide awareness of rapidly disappearing sea ice, documenting the impacts of global warming on this fragile ecosystem and on the traditional way of life for the people of the North.
But first, in the summer of 2014, Team SEDNA will travel aboard the 116-foot MV Cape Race, from northern Labrador to Baffin Island and across the Davis Strait to Western Greenland, testing their “proof-of-concept” by focusing on team-building and demonstrating that snorkelers – using diver propulsion vehicles – can successfully “go the distance” through ice-infested waters.
Read an interview with Eaton here: http://www.explorersweb.com/print.php?url=susan-eaton-nwp-snorkel_1381437537
EXPEDITION NOTES
The Edwardian Equivalent of Space Travel
When Douglas Mawson plodded into base camp at Commonwealth Bay in Antarctica in February 1913, his fellow explorers barely recognized him. The geologist was in terrible physical shape after a harrowing journey into the Antarctic interior during which two of his fellow explorers had died. By the time his ship, the SY Aurora, arrived in December 1913, to take his team home, they had spent more than two years on the frozen continent – a whole year longer than planned. It was the Edwardian equivalent of space travel.
Mawson’s was one of the major expeditions during what has become known as the “Heroic Age” of Antarctic exploration of a century ago. Unlike his better known contemporaries Ernest Shackleton, Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott, he had no interest in racing to the South Pole, preferring to focus on scientific research. Two-thirds of his crew were scientists engaged in geological, marine and wildlife research and their measurements, carefully made in the face of tragic losses and horrendous conditions, are some of the most valuable scientific data in existence.
This month, scientists began the month-long Australasian Antarctic Expedition 2013 to re-trace Mawson’s journey and examine how the eastern Antarctic, one of the most pristine, remote and untouched parts of the world’s surface, has responded after a hundred years of climate changes. (For more information: www.spiritofmawson.com)
Bike the Hudson
Something tells us there are some new firsts waiting, if you can call it that. Now that the Hudson River and San Francisco Bay have been successfully crossed by bicycle, expect to see other body of waters attempted. This fall ad man Judah Schiller, of Mill Valley, Calif., founder of BayCycle Project, crossed both the Hudson River and San Francisco Bay on a bike mounted to two pontoons.
BayCycle Project is introducing a sustainable commuting alternative, showing the world that biking across bodies of water is possible even where there are no bridges or bike lanes. Schiller calls it a new aquatic frontier in biking.
BayCycle Project is the first U.S. organizing body and community for water biking, a new sport that combines the adventure and health benefits of bike riding with the dynamic and ever changing terrain of water. Water biking is said to hold many recreational and competitive possibilities for bicyclists. It may also serve as a viable form of bike commuting in cities with navigable waterways.
We’re thinking adventurers will soon latch onto the concept to cross far more knarly bodies of water.
(For more information: www.baycycleproject.com and http://youtu.be/UtMDkRRWr6o)
HIV/AIDS Campaigner Completes Circumvention of Long Island by Rowboat
Victor Mooney of Flushing, N.Y., and his 24-ft. foot Brazilian-made ocean rowboat Spirit of Malabo completed a circumvention of Long Island early last month in preparation for his fourth bid to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
Later this year, Mooney, 48, will depart from Las Palmas, Canary Islands, and row 5,000 miles back to New York with a resupply in the British Virgin Islands. The rower, executive director for South African Arts International, has lost one brother to AIDS and has another battling the disease. Mooney hopes his row will encourage HIV testing.
His last three attempts were valiant tries: his homemade boat sunk off the coast of Dakar in 2006; in 2009 he aborted 600 miles from Dakar when he couldn’t produce electricity to run a desalinator; during a third try in 2011, his boat was damaged in transit, causing him to abandon ship and live in a life raft for 14 days drifting in the Atlantic until rescue.
(For more information: www.goreechallenge.com, http://youtu.be/Z0JrYUxWNgQ)
Adventurers Needed to Study Native U.S. Grasslands
The steppes of Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Patagonia and the Northern Great Plains of America are the four places left on Earth where vast, native grasslands have never been plowed. In 2014, Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation (ASC) and American Prairie Reserve (APR) are partnering on an adventure-science wildlife study on the prairies of northeastern Montana.
Since 2001, APR has been working to create the largest protected wildlife area in the Continental United States. When completed the area will be larger than Yellowstone National Park and contain many of the species present when Lewis and Clark first crossed the plains, including the nation's largest herd of free-roaming bison. Currently the Reserve covers 270,000 acres and is visited by more than 60 mammal species and 250 species of birds. The Reserve is home to many of North America's native wildlife including bison, pronghorn, sage grouse, prairie dog, bald eagle and mountain lion.
To learn more about this diversity of life, ASC is beginning a multi-year adventure-science study on the Reserve. Six-person survey crews will cover the grasslands in all four seasons collecting wildlife data. The collected data will establish trends over time and inform management decisions as the Reserve grows.
(For more information: www.americanprairiereserve.org, www.adventureandscience.org)
AAC Members Study Peru’s Glaciated Peaks
Nearly 50 American Alpine Club members volunteered with the American Climber Science Program (ACSP) in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca this summer. For the past three years, the ACSP and AAC members have innovated new field research techniques examining environmental change on Huascaran National Park’s highest glaciated peaks, summiting peaks as high as Huascaran Sur (22,205-ft./6768 m) to collect data.
As a team, the ACSP spends three months each Peruvian winter in elevations from 12,000 to 20,000 feet working extensively with Peru’s scientists, academics, and planners during this conservation and research program.
The team collected data for a range of research projects including water quality, vegetation change, and glacier recession. They also collected several thousand vegetation photos as part of an effort to write and publish a book titled, Flora of Huascaran National Park and the Cordillera Blanca.
(For more information: http://inclined.americanalpineclub.org/2013/10/climbers-and-scientists-working-together-in-the-cordillera-blanca-peru/)
The First Photograph: Who Knew?
One of the last things we expected to see during a recent business trip to Austin, Tex., was the very first photograph ever taken. Indeed. There in the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin is the forerunner to every daguerreotype, to every photo of Shackleton and Scott, the ancestor of every National Geographic image.
Joseph Nicephore Niepce’s View from the Window at Le Gras, circa 1826-27, is among the world’s greatest treasures and known everywhere as the “First Photograph.” The image, a heliograph on pewter, depicts the view from an upstairs window at his estate, Le Gras, which is located in the Burgundy region of France. As such, it represents the origin of today’s photography, film, and other media arts. The image was taken using pewter plates coated with bitumen of Judea (an asphalt derivative of petroleum). He loaded it into a camera obscura looking out his second-story window.
After an exposure of at least eight hours, Niepce, who lived from 1765 to 1833, removed the plate and washed it with a mixture of white petroleum and oil of lavender to dissolve the areas of bitumen that had not been hardened by light. He called his invention “heliography” or sun drawing. You can see it here: http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/permanent/
Help Build a Cross-Country Bicycle
The Explorers Club is looking for technically proficient volunteers for a 2015 expedition to build a unique bicycle to cross the country using only human, wind, solar, and mechanical energy (solar and mechanical engineers and bicycle assemblers preferred). It will be a flag expedition in connection with the next crossing by the sun powered Solar Impulse airplane in 2015 as part of the effort of members Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg to circle the world in a sun-powered airplane. (For more information: Linn Johnson, linnjohnson@hotmail.com – insert “Bike Project” in the subject line).
F-4 Needed for Joe Kittinger Park
Community support is building to honor Col. Joe W. Kittinger, USAF (Retired)
with an historic jet for a park bearing his name. Friends of Kittinger are attempting to raise $200,000 needed to bring an F-4 Phantom jet to Joe Kittinger Park near Orlando (Fla.) Executive Airport. The monument will also honor and recognize the Central Florida Veterans that served the U.S. and participated in the Vietnam War from 1961-1973. Kittinger shot down a MiG 21 with an F-4.
In 1960, Kittinger set a record by skydiving from an altitude of 19 miles, landing himself on the cover of Life Magazine. The record was broken in 2012 when Felix Baumgartner jumped from a helium balloon 24 miles in the air. Kittinger helped Baumgartner beat that record.
(For more information: Kittinger F-4 Park, Inc., 608 Mariner Way, Altamonte Springs, FL 32701).
Have Camera-Will Travel: Photography/Videographer Available
Professional photographer Bernard P. Friel of Mendota Heights, Minn., offers his services to exploration projects looking for someone to document their expedition with photographs or video. Friel has had over 30 years experience leading and documenting expeditions in such diverse locations as the Arctic, Africa, Papua New Guinea, South America, Canada and scores of remote and wilderness areas in the U.S.
(For more information: www.wampy.com, 651 454 3655, wampy@att.net).
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“I cannot rest from travel; I will drink life to the lees.”
– Ulysses, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
(Editor’s note: “lees” refers to the sediment of wine in a barrel)
MEDIA MATTERS
Bleak Days for Space Exploration
In a Wall Street Journal (Nov. 30-Dec. 1) review of astronaut Chris Hadfield’s book, An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth (Little, Brown, 2013), Adam Savage paints of bleak picture of current space exploration. He writes, “But these days hardly seem like hopeful ones for space exploration. The Space Shuttle has been retired, and it's not clear what our future goals for extraplanetary endeavors should be, nor how they will be funded. Congress has trimmed NASA's budget, and its ambitions.
“Even those of us who retain a capacity for wonder might find ourselves questioning our society's commitment to science and the furthering of our understanding of our universe.”
He praises Hadfield and his book, explaining that Hadfield is a “great communicator in the Carl Sagan sense, who knows the power of social media and uses it with the savvy of a rock star. To his million-plus followers on Twitter, he has posted scores of photographs showing us our Earth and our galaxy from the unique vantage point of the International Space Station.”
Young People Must Test Themselves
News of Nicholas Mevoli’s death last month during a freediving competition at Dean’s Blue Hole in the Bahamas has shocked many of the sport’s devotees. Tim Winton writes in the New York Times (Nov. 23), “…young people need to test themselves. In domesticated societies so bereft of wildness, they need to register the cold scorch of fear now and then in order to feel truly alive. And it’s good for people to find and exceed their limits.
“Humans have long survived through the willed suppression of panic. Without it there would be no hunting, no exploration, no innovation, no civility.”
EXPEDITION MARKETING
LEKI Signs Climber Melissa Arnot
LEKI, the Buffalo, N.Y.-based manufacturer of skiing, trekking and Nordic walking poles, has signed mountain guide and climber Melissa Arnot to join its roster of sponsored athletes which includes fellow climber Ueli Steck. Arnot is the women’s record holder for Everest summits (five). She has been part of four expeditions to Cotopaxi, four to Aconcagua, three to Cayambe and has summited Rainier over 100 times. As part of her multi-year sponsorship agreement, Arnot will be a brand ambassador and provide input to the company’s design and development team on future product introductions. (www.leki.com)
EXPEDITION INK
2013 National Outdoor Book Award Winners Announced
A clash between politics and nature is front and center among the winners of the 2013 National Outdoor Book Awards.
Krista Schlyer in her winning book The Great Divide, reports on the controversial border wall between the United States and Mexico and its effect on the natural environment.
"This is a groundbreaking work," said Ron Watters, the chair of the National Outdoor Book Awards. "The effects of the border wall on the environment have been left out of the national discourse, but Krista Schlyer casts a bright light on this forgotten part of the debate."
Schlyer's book won the Nature and Environment category, one of ten categories which make up the National Outdoor Book Awards. The awards program is sponsored by the National Outdoor Book Awards Foundation, Idaho State University and the Association of Outdoor Recreation and Education.
See complete reviews of the 2013 winners at the National Outdoor Book Awards at www.noba-web.org.
BUZZ WORDS
Deep Water Soloing
A head-to-head climbing competition on a 50-ft. tall wall with no ropes or safety gear, but rather a swimming pool below to catch falls. The driving force behind bringing the sport to the U.S. from Europe is climber Chris Sharma. Boulderers typically climb on walls up to 20 feet unroped, but go no higher and jump down safely on gymnastic-style crash pads. Sport climbers are used to the heights, but compete attached to a rope to catch their falls. (Source: OR Show Daily)
WEB WATCH
TNF Video Celebrates Insatiable Curiosity to Explore
“People will always have a desire to explore what they haven’t seen,” says Dr. Buzz Aldrin in an astounding promotional film for The North Face titled, “The Explorer.” Aldrin goes on to say, “Human beings are not apt to back away from something that is a challenge.”
Drop everything and spend two minutes to see it here: http://www.theadventurepost.com/all-posts/buzz-aldrin-reflects-on-mankinds-desire-to-explore/
Trash Man
Washed up on the remote beaches of southern Alaska are plastics of every shape, size and color, according to Smithsonian.com. There are detergent bottles, cigarette lighters, fishing nets and buoys, oil drums, fly swatters and Styrofoam balls in various states of decay. They come from around the world, adrift in rotating sea currents called gyres, and get snagged in the nooks and crannies of Alaska’s shoreline. Set against a backdrop of trees, grizzly bears and volcanic mountains, these plastics are eye-catching, almost pretty—and yet they are polluting the world’s oceans.
The garbage, dubbed “marine debris” by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, wreaks havoc on marine ecosystems.
In June 2013, a team of artists and scientists set out to see the blight firsthand. Expedition GYRE, a project of the Anchorage Museum and the Alaska SeaLife Center, traveled 450 nautical miles along the coast of the Gulf of Alaska to observe, collect and study marine debris. A companion exhibition, opening in February 2014 at the Anchorage Museum, will showcase artworks made using ocean debris.
For the artists on the GYRE expedition, each day in Alaska was filled with scientific briefings, trash reconnaissance and individual pursuits. All four artists—Mark Dion, Pam Longobardi, Andy Hughes and Karen Larsen—are known for work that explores environmental themes and, more or less explicitly, the pleasures and perils of plastic.
Log on to see Dion’s artwork made of plastic bottle caps. On the black sand of an Alaskan beach, he created a collage of bottle caps, sorted by shape and color. It wasn’t a finished piece, by any means, but an effort to “learn by seeing.” He cast himself as the “proverbial Martian archaeologist,” trying to make sense of the detritus of human civilization based on its formal qualities.
See Dion’s artwork here: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/artscience/2013/11/artists-join-scientists-on-an-expedition-to-collect-marine-debris/
ON THE HORIZON
Conrad Anker Emcees Jeff Lowe Fundraiser, Dec. 17, Golden, Colo.
Climber Conrad Anker will emcee a fundraiser to celebrate Jeff Lowe and benefit his documentary film Metanoia, narrated by Jon Krakauer, and directed by Jim Aikman. The film is due for release in spring 2014. Lowe was a designer of gear and clothing, a writer, filmmaker, and organizer of events including the Sport Climbing Championships, the X-Games Ice Tower and Ouray Ice Festival. Tickets are $20-$25. Bradford Washburn Mountaineering Museum, Golden, Colo. (For more information: Connie Self, jloweclimber@gmail.com, 208 630 4477).
American Alpine Club Honors Chouinard, Feb. 7-8, 2014, Denver
The AAC honors Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard on Feb. 8 at the Sheraton Denver Downtown. The weekend also includes a panel discussion featuring climber Lynn Hill, moderated by Allison Osius.
(For more information: http://www.americanalpineclub.org/p/2014-annual-benefit-dinner)
EN HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE
If you’re like the staff of EN, you have closets full of climbing gear. The attic is stuffed with camping equipment. The garage? Forget about it. Snowshoes, skis, mountain bikes – they hang from every beam and rafter. And then there’s the schwag drawer in the kitchen filled with the debris of trade shows long past – eyeglass retainers, stress balls, lip balm, and blinky lights. Ack!
Still, it’s never enough. Which is why we bring you our annual Holiday Gift Guide for your friends and loved ones who share a similar love of droolworthy gear. Just don’t expect us to recommend soap-on-a-rope or a tie with spouting whales. Far from it. Add these items to your holiday shopping list.
Poor Man’s Google Glass – It’ll be at least a year until Google Glass comes out. Meanwhile, what’s an obnoxious friend or family member to do? Get them Pivothead: Video Recording Eyewear. A 1080p HD 8MP camera is hidden in the bridge above the nose. Hidden, that is, like a third eye. These sunglasses look like what our schlubby Uncle Moishe wears on top of his prescription glasses in Boca. Shoot HD video hands-free. ($278-$299, www.pivothead.com)
Hands Schmands – The Horological Machine No. 3 from MB&F in Geneva costs $91,000 but don’t expect this timepiece to come with a watch face and hands. Its spaceship like design features revolving number barrels representing hours and minutes that are housed in separate cockpits, while ceramic ball-bearing systems resemble rocket engines. It weighs more than one-third of a pound, which may be why they only make just 20 HM3 watches a year. Get it for the holidays or as a bon voyage gift for anyone traveling for $250,000 on Richard Branson’s upcoming space slingshot. ($91,000, www. mbandf.com)
Better Than Commando – As we all know, women explorers must be ready to leave at a moment’s notice to go climb Everest or K2. SPairz are 100% cotton women's underwear that are compressed and shrink-wrapped so a woman can break into these puppies on the way to the airport. The panties are compressed into a package about the size of a business card or a package of gum and are about 1 cm in depth. A great stocking stuffer. Fashionable? Not so much. ($10 each, www.spairz.com)
iGeek – From the Ministry of Silly Hats comes a gizmo that allows a friend or loved one to wear their smartphone on their head. It’s called a Giddyeo from Tribbit and features an adjustable grippy strap that creates a tight hold and works with any smartphone. Sure, it looks funny, but we’re guessing it comes in handy when you’re belaying and prefer to use two hands. ($24.99, www.mytribbit.com)
The Perfect Gift for Dirtbags – The perfect gift for that dirtbag climber in your life is, well, a dirtbag. Actually it’s called a Scrubba Wash Bag – a flexible washboard in a sealable bag. You just press down and rub clothes against the Scrubba wash
bag’s internal flexible washboard for 30 seconds for a quick traveler wash or for three minutes for a machine quality wash. ($64.95, www.thescrubba.com)
Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man? – That’s what Rex Harrison sang in My Fair Lady. We couldn’t agree more. The EN Holiday Gift Guide would be incomplete if we didn’t suggest at least one gift that allows a woman to pee anywhere a man could. The Whiz Easy comes from those resourceful Canadians who no doubt find themselves in bathroom-challenged remote Nunavut. Soft and pliable, it fits the outer curves of the human body comfortably without nasty flow-backs, splashes or spills. Besides, if it ever does leak, you could always break into that extra pair of SPairz to mop up. ($32.45, www.whizeasy.com)
EXPEDITION CLASSIFIEDS
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EXPEDITION NEWS is published by Blumenfeld and Associates, Inc., 1281 East Main Street – Box 10, Stamford, CT 06902 USA. Tel. 203 655 1600, editor@expeditionnews.com, @expeditionnews. Editor/publisher: Jeff Blumenfeld. Assistant editor: Jamie Gribbon. Research editor: Lee Kovel. ©2013 Blumenfeld and Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN: 1526-8977. Subscriptions: US$36/yr. available by e-mail only. Credit card payments accepted through www.paypal.com. Read EXPEDITION NEWS at www.expeditionnews.com. Enjoy the EN blog at www.expeditionnews.blogspot.com.
Thursday, November 7, 2013
AROUND THE WORLD BY TUK TUK
EXPEDITION UPDATE
Explorers Complete Titicaca Circumnavigation
Two explorers, Belgian explorer Louis-Philippe Loncke and Peruvian guide Gadiel Sanchez Rivera, completed an epic journey on Lake Titicaca, the largest lake of South America (see EN, Sept. 2013). On Aug. 17, they left Puno in Peru and returned 38 days later after paddling nearly 684-miles/1100 km. The main objective was to explore the lake like never before by paddling close to land to create a geotagged photographic inventory of the shoreline.
Despite record cold temperatures, their study will now be used to compare future coastal evolution, in a manner similar to the study of retreating glaciers, according to Loncke, 36, an IT project manager from Brussels.
Read their blog here: http://louphi.blogspot.com/search/label/Titicaca
EXPEDITION NOTES
Kiteboarders Hope to Cross Atlantic
Later this month, six kiteboarders will soar from the port of Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands embarking on reportedly the first-ever, non-stop crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. They will be bound for the Blue Haven Resort and Marina in the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean (see the photo - we expect it will be a welcome relief from the open ocean). Kiteboarding is a kite-powered means of transportation on snow, ice or water. It combines aspects of wakeboarding, windsurfing, surfing, paragliding, and gymnastics into one extreme sport.
Following a South Atlantic route, their arrival – two to three weeks later – is estimated between Dec. 7 and Dec. 15.
During the crossing – which will feature daily social media posts with photos of all six participants – the adventurers will take over from one another every two hours during the 3,728-mi./6,000-km long journey, surfing both day and night. In this extreme long distance “downwinder” they will be supported by a 50-foot catamaran and its professional crew. A TV crew will also be on board documenting the crossing.
The Atlantic Kite Challenge is the brainchild of Netherlands-based Filippo van Hellenberg Hubar, founder of the Enable Passion Foundation. Filippo will be one of the six kiteboarders partaking in the Challenge along with Max Blom, also from the Netherlands. The team also includes: Camilla Ringvold of Norway, Bruno Sroka of France and Francisco Lufinha of Portugal. American Eric Pequeno was chosen as the sixth kiteboarder through a social media competition on Facebook.
Sponsors include: Blue Haven Resort and Marina, Mystic, Urge, Slingshot and GoPro.
The Enable Passion foundation is a non-profit foundation that strives to inspire people in realizing their passions, by organizing and carrying out extraordinary and pioneering projects.
For more information: www.enablepassion.com, https://www.facebook.com/EnablePassion
Rickshaw Adventurers Promote Education
Two U.K. teachers are driving a tuk tuk around the world to promote education. So far two 28-year-olds, Nick Gough and Richard Sears, have dragged the three-wheeled machine through Europe, down Africa and across Asia and at press time find themselves in Ecuador, the 36th country visited. Driving a motorized version of the traditional pulled rickshaw or cycle rickshaw, they have tackled deserts and jungles, pushing the tuk tuk for hundreds of miles through deep sand and thick mud.
They survived close encounters with elephants in Uganda and Botswana, and an accident in Malaysia when a truck plowed into the back of them. The greatest toll on the tuk tuk has been the mountain ranges lying in their path, including the Alps, the Himalayas and the Andes.
Some 1,200-miles from now, Nick and Rich's expedition, titled Tuk Tuk Travels, will have surpassed the current world record for “the longest distance traveled in an auto-rickshaw.” Their primary goal has been to increase the awareness of the importance of quality global education while highlighting different inspirational, grassroots education projects that can be supported through their charity, The Tuk Tuk Educational Trust.
Sponsors include Cardiff University, DSV and Macmillan Education.
For more information and a look at their Ted Talk, log onto: www.tuktuktravels.com
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Ambition leads me not only farther than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go.”
— Captain James Cook (1728-1779). British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the Royal Navy.
MEDIA MATTERS
“You Don’t Have to Be a Rocket Scientist”
Richard Branson realizes his visions can sound grandiose. "I'll often talk ahead of myself," he says. And it will be at least 20 years before he knows whether his fantasy went too far. "But by talking ahead of yourself, you then get the team to work hard to catch up," he says. "You don't have to be a rocket scientist to be able to run a spaceship company."
Alexandra Wolfe’s profile of Branson, 63, in the Nov. 1 Wall Street Journal reveals that 650 people have bought tickets to take flight on Branson’s commercial spacecraft as early as 2014. After launching from New Mexico, each spaceship will take six passengers on a two- and three-hour journey just over 62 miles from Earth.
Today he thinks space travel is where aviation was in the 1920s. The price for air travel then, adjusted for inflation is comparable to the $250,000 he is charging for his spaceflights, he says.
"My guess is 30 years from now…if enough spaceships will be built, enormous quantities of people will have a chance to go to space.”
“Climbing and Guiding is My Life”
In an Oct. 13 interview, Pemba Gyalje Sherpa tells the New York Times, “… climbing and guiding is my life, I will never stop.” He was among a group of climbers who, in early August 2008, suffered the loss of 11 climbers on K2 in the heart of the Karakoram Range in northern Pakistan. Mr. Sherpa rescued two of the climbers who were trapped above 26,000 feet. The Summit, a documentary released last month in the U.S., retells the story of the disaster and the rescue effort.
He explains that before Western explorers, Sherpa didn’t climb mountains as sport. “We trekked and herded cattle, but didn’t climb.” He explains that his climbing gear includes brands Black Diamond, Petzl and Beal. For jackets, undergarments and sleeping bags he recommends Feathered Friends, Sherpa Adventure Gear, North Face, and Mountain Hardware.
He suggests that someone interested in high altitude climbing keep hiking, trekking and climbing in a high altitude environment in the Himalayas or Andes Mountains. “Some technical training on snow, ice, rock and mixed terrain is also important.”
Mountaineering is a Peak Experience
The “glories” of mountaineering are the focus of an Oct. 28 Wall Street Journal story by Glenn K. Beaton. He writes, “Many people are trying their hand at guided climbing in later life, and with good reason. The scenery is stunning; the goals are challenging but achievable; and the rewards – physical, emotional and spiritual – are hard to top.”
Beaton continues, “The bonus: Because climbers never go faster than three miles an hour, at least not on purpose, guided climbing is safer than most people think.”
He suggests seeking guides who are good climbers with whom you have a personal relationship. They cost several hundreds dollars a day, plus at least 10 percent or more in tips. For guide recommendations, he suggests the American Mountain Guides Association (www.amga.com).
Local Hometown Climber Makes News
When local amateur climbers summit Everest, it often makes big news in hometown newspapers. Such was the case when reporter Katy Savage interviewed Killington, Vermont, native Scott Smith for her Oct. 10 story in the Vermont Standard, based in Woodstock, Vt. Smith tells of having to step over dead bodies en route to the summit of Everest.
“It was pitch dark, windy. It’s cold, I had diarrhea. I was thirsty and then I came upon this freshly dead corpse from the night before and I just thought to myself this is really, really serious.
“Encountering some of the dead bodies really makes you think of your goal and whether it’s really worth it. You start thinking of your family and your children,” Smith says.
Even with an oxygen mask, Smith remembers taking one step and then having to stop to take 10 deep breaths. “It’s almost like someone’s choking you,” he said. “You’re literally on the edge mentally and physically.”
He made the summit on May 23, 2013 with the help of Oxycodone to relieve the pain from kidney stones, which he eventually passed. (Too much information? Blame the Vermont Standard).
The Grand Rescue
The Grand Rescue is a story of a rescue that became legend. On the North Face of the Grand Teton (13,770-ft.) in 1967, seven rescuers risked their lives to save a severely injured climber and his companion.
This month a documentary film of the same name by director/producer Jenny Wilson, the daughter of rescue team member Ted Wilson, premiered in Salt Lake City. (www.thegrandrescue.com)
The rescue took three harrowing days and pushed the team to new abilities. Remarkably, the injured climber criticized those who risked their lives to save his.
As the rescuers toiled through each phase of the rescue, Gaylord Campbell repeatedly questioned their procedures and techniques. He felt the rescue was inefficiently managed and that someone else might get hurt. He questioned the use of equipment, procedures, and leadership decisions. He complained about the time it took to get off of the mountain. More than 40 years later, Campbell continued to question the choices made, according to Jenny Wilson.
Read more about this amazing story here:
http://inclined.americanalpineclub.org/2013/11/our-members-film-director-and-producer-jenny-wilson/
A Fancy Feast
Yvon Chouinard, the 74-year-old conservationist, athlete and craftsman who founded Patagonia, recalled the company’s start in a story in The Vertical, the apparel and gear manufacturer’s newspaper distributed in its iconic stores. When asked about his habit of eating canned cat food in the early days to get through a summer on a budget, he replies, “Yeah, I ate a lot of it. It wasn’t very good. But it was better than dog food.”
Later, he comments on the origin of the company name, “We put Patagonia on the map, now everybody knows where it is, everybody goes down there.
“The name Patagonia has been really good because it can be pronounced in every language. I mean, try and get the Japanese to pronounce Lululemon,” Chouinard laughs.
Genghis Khan Book Captures Grand Prize at Banff Festival
Last month, the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival in Banff, Alberta, announced the winners of its book competition:
• Grand Prize – On the Trail of Genghis Khan: An Epic Journey Through the Land of the Nomads, Tim Cope, Bloomsbury (USA, 2013)
• Mountain Fiction and Poetry – Nothing Gold Can Stay, Ron Rash, HarperCollins Publishers (USA, 2013)
• Mountain & Wilderness Literature – Non-Fiction – Everest -The First Ascent: How a Champion of Science Helped to Conquer the Mountain, Harriet Tuckey, Lyons Press (USA, 2013)
• Mountain Image – Pamir: Forgotten on the Roof of the World, Matthieu and Mariele Paley, Editions de la Martinière (France, 2012)
• Mountaineering History – James Monroe Thorington Award – The Conquest of Everest, George Lowe and Huw Lewis-Jones, Thames & Hudson (UK, 2013)
• Guidebooks – Patagonia Vertical, Rolando Garibotti and Dörte Pietron, (Sidarta Guides, Slovenia, 2012)
Learn about all the winners and finalists here:
http://www.banffcentre.ca/mountainfestival/competitions/book/#tab1
CLIMBING FOR DOLLARS
Who Needs Sponsors Anyway?
No matter how good your idea, sponsorship comes with time and a good track record, says Swedish explorer Mikael Strandberg in a newly posted blog entry. He presents three tips for landing the sponsor that can mean the difference between going or staying home. First, ask yourself: do you really need sponsors.
“If you have the funds, it is a better choice to avoid sponsors: less work, less stress and you run everything the way you want,” he advises.
Second, consider what can you offer sponsors, which all the other explorers cannot.
Finally, target only those sponsors that fit your vision. “If your expedition has an ecological theme – most have today, since this sells and looks good – why sign up with a sponsor who has a poor record on these issues and is purely commercial?”
Strandberg has some astounding expeditions on his c.v., including winter travel in Siberia with reindeer and sleds in minus 76 degrees F., and, in 1989-1992, he bicycled from Norway to South Africa – a distance of 20,505-miles/33,000 km, passing through the Sahara Desert. It took three months to push the bike through the desert, with the help of only a manual compass.
Read his post here:
http://www.mikaelstrandberg.com/2013/10/28/3-tips-of-advice-regarding-getting-a-sponsor/
Big City Mountaineers Launches 10th Annual Summit for Someone Series
Big City Mountaineers (BCM) announced the launch of its 10th anniversary season of the Summit for Someone (SFS) fundraising climb series, which is one of the top mountaineering fundraisers in the country. Funds raised through SFS support BCM’s mission to instill critical life skills in under-resourced youth through transformative wilderness mentoring expeditions.
Since its inception, 1,740 climbers have raised over $5 million through SFS to help under-resourced youth participate in powerful one-on-one wilderness mentoring programs.
In 2014, high altitude mountaineer and BCM board member Ed Viesturs plans to climb Mt. Hood and Mont Blanc to raise $200,000 for BCM youth.
SFS participants are given the opportunity to travel, climb the world’s premier mountains, and positively impact the lives of urban youth. Climbers choose from 33 separate climbs on 20 classic peaks including the Grand Teton, Mt. Rainier and Mt. Kilimanjaro, or they can create their own challenge. Sponsors of the program include Backpacker Magazine, JanSport and Black Diamond.
For more information: www.bigcitymountaineers.org/summit-for-someone, 303 271 9200 ext 303.
EXPEDITION MARKETING
Prince Harry’s South Pole Expedition: We’ll Drink to That
Glenfiddich has launched a national advertising campaign in the U.K. as part of its sponsorship of the 208-mile/335 km Walking With The Wounded (WWTW) South Pole Expedition.
The 16-day project, departing later this month, involves three teams of wounded servicemen and women on one of the most high profile expeditions of modern times, racing across 3 degrees to the Geographic South Pole, arriving approximately Dec. 17. The purpose is to show the world the courage and determination of the men and women who have been wounded while serving their countries, and to encourage the publics’ further support.
This is the whiskey brand’s second sponsorship of the WWTW Expedition, having supported the team racing to the top of Everest last year.
Ahead of the 2013 challenge, it has launched an approximately $1 million campaign with the tagline, “No Ordinary Race, No Ordinary Team.” The ads feature all four members of the U.K. team – including right leg amputee Guy Disney, left leg amputee Kate Philp, double leg amputee Duncan Slater, and arm amputee Ibrar Ali – taking on the race to the South Pole.
The U.K. team, led by Prince Harry, will compete against other, ex-soldier teams from the U.S. and Commonwealth, in a race to the South Pole.
For more information: www.walkingwiththewounded.org.uk.
See the campaign ad here:
http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/news/article/1218990/glenfiddich-champions-walking-wounded-race-south-pole/
WEB WATCH
Mallory and Irvine Captured on 1924 Film
A few months ago Huntley Film Archives posted a fascinating 10-min. film about a 1924 attempt on Mount Everest featuring eight expedition members (including George Mallory and Sandy Irvine), a line or 20 or so porters and Sherpa, mules, yaks, the Great Ice Cliff at 23,000 feet, the works.
Less than 300 people have viewed this archival footage on YouTube, so we like to think this is a rare glimpse into mountaineering’s past.
The last title slide ends rather poignantly that Everest remains: UNCONQUERED.
You can view the film here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M--qF0Fm5I8
ON THE HORIZON
Explorers Club Polar Film Festival, Nov. 22-23, 2013, New York
The Explorers Club HQ in New York will host its second annual Polar Film Festival showcasing a diverse collection of feature films, documentaries and shorts about and from the Arctic and Antarctica. The films explore the history and grandeur of Earth’s polar regions as well as the environmental challenges they are facing. Public tickets are $25 to $35.
For more information: 212 628 8383; http://www.explorers.org/index.php/events/detail/polar_film_festival_saturday
“Gift of Sight” Expedition Hosts Public Lecture, 6 p.m., Nov. 25, 2013,
The Explorers Club, New York
The public is invited to a presentation by the Dooley Intermed Foundation about the 2013 “Gift of Sight” Expedition to remote Lower Mustang in Nepal. As part of this humanitarian effort, over 700 impoverished Nepali villagers received quality eyecare from Operation Restore Vision and the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary (See EN, June 2013). The evening features talks by expedition leader Scott Hamilton and the ophthalmologists who traveled to Nepal on this important mission.
This will be one of the first public showings of a nine-minute documentary of the expedition produced by Skyship Films. Preview the film at www.dooleyintermed.org. Admission is $20; students with valid i.d. $5. Location is 46 East 70th Street on the Upper East Side.
EXPEDITION CLASSIFIEDS
Advertise in Expedition News – For just 50 cents a word, you can reach an estimated 10,000 readers of America’s only monthly newsletter celebrating the world of expeditions on land, in space, and beneath the sea. Join us as we take a sometimes irreverent look at the people and projects making Expedition News. Frequency discounts are available. (For more information: blumassoc@aol.com).
Ripped From the Pages of EN – Read the book that was spawned by Expedition News. Autographed copies of You Want to Go Where? – How to Get Someone to Pay for the Trip of Your Dreams (Skyhorse Publishing) – are available to readers for the discounted price of $14.99 plus $2.89 s & h (international orders add $9.95 s & h). If you have a project that is bigger than yourself – a trip with a purpose – learn how it’s possible to generate cash or in-kind (gear) support. Written by EN editor Jeff Blumenfeld, it is based upon three decades helping sponsors select the right exploration projects to support. Payable by PayPal to blumassoc@aol.com, or by check to Expedition News, 1281 East Main Street – Box 10, Stamford, CT 06902
EXPEDITION NEWS is published by Blumenfeld and Associates, Inc., 1281 East Main Street – Box 10, Stamford, CT 06902 USA. Tel. 203 655 1600, editor@expeditionnews.com. Editor/publisher: Jeff Blumenfeld. Assistant editor: Jamie Gribbon. Research editor: Lee Kovel. ©2013 Blumenfeld and Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN: 1526-8977. Subscriptions: US$36/yr. available by e-mail only. Credit card payments accepted through www.paypal.com. Read EXPEDITION NEWS at www.expeditionnews.com. Enjoy the EN blog at www.expeditionnews.blogspot.com.
Explorers Complete Titicaca Circumnavigation
Two explorers, Belgian explorer Louis-Philippe Loncke and Peruvian guide Gadiel Sanchez Rivera, completed an epic journey on Lake Titicaca, the largest lake of South America (see EN, Sept. 2013). On Aug. 17, they left Puno in Peru and returned 38 days later after paddling nearly 684-miles/1100 km. The main objective was to explore the lake like never before by paddling close to land to create a geotagged photographic inventory of the shoreline.
Despite record cold temperatures, their study will now be used to compare future coastal evolution, in a manner similar to the study of retreating glaciers, according to Loncke, 36, an IT project manager from Brussels.
Read their blog here: http://louphi.blogspot.com/search/label/Titicaca
EXPEDITION NOTES
Kiteboarders Hope to Cross Atlantic
Later this month, six kiteboarders will soar from the port of Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands embarking on reportedly the first-ever, non-stop crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. They will be bound for the Blue Haven Resort and Marina in the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean (see the photo - we expect it will be a welcome relief from the open ocean). Kiteboarding is a kite-powered means of transportation on snow, ice or water. It combines aspects of wakeboarding, windsurfing, surfing, paragliding, and gymnastics into one extreme sport.
Following a South Atlantic route, their arrival – two to three weeks later – is estimated between Dec. 7 and Dec. 15.
During the crossing – which will feature daily social media posts with photos of all six participants – the adventurers will take over from one another every two hours during the 3,728-mi./6,000-km long journey, surfing both day and night. In this extreme long distance “downwinder” they will be supported by a 50-foot catamaran and its professional crew. A TV crew will also be on board documenting the crossing.
The Atlantic Kite Challenge is the brainchild of Netherlands-based Filippo van Hellenberg Hubar, founder of the Enable Passion Foundation. Filippo will be one of the six kiteboarders partaking in the Challenge along with Max Blom, also from the Netherlands. The team also includes: Camilla Ringvold of Norway, Bruno Sroka of France and Francisco Lufinha of Portugal. American Eric Pequeno was chosen as the sixth kiteboarder through a social media competition on Facebook.
Sponsors include: Blue Haven Resort and Marina, Mystic, Urge, Slingshot and GoPro.
The Enable Passion foundation is a non-profit foundation that strives to inspire people in realizing their passions, by organizing and carrying out extraordinary and pioneering projects.
For more information: www.enablepassion.com, https://www.facebook.com/EnablePassion
Rickshaw Adventurers Promote Education
Two U.K. teachers are driving a tuk tuk around the world to promote education. So far two 28-year-olds, Nick Gough and Richard Sears, have dragged the three-wheeled machine through Europe, down Africa and across Asia and at press time find themselves in Ecuador, the 36th country visited. Driving a motorized version of the traditional pulled rickshaw or cycle rickshaw, they have tackled deserts and jungles, pushing the tuk tuk for hundreds of miles through deep sand and thick mud.
They survived close encounters with elephants in Uganda and Botswana, and an accident in Malaysia when a truck plowed into the back of them. The greatest toll on the tuk tuk has been the mountain ranges lying in their path, including the Alps, the Himalayas and the Andes.
Some 1,200-miles from now, Nick and Rich's expedition, titled Tuk Tuk Travels, will have surpassed the current world record for “the longest distance traveled in an auto-rickshaw.” Their primary goal has been to increase the awareness of the importance of quality global education while highlighting different inspirational, grassroots education projects that can be supported through their charity, The Tuk Tuk Educational Trust.
Sponsors include Cardiff University, DSV and Macmillan Education.
For more information and a look at their Ted Talk, log onto: www.tuktuktravels.com
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Ambition leads me not only farther than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go.”
— Captain James Cook (1728-1779). British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the Royal Navy.
MEDIA MATTERS
“You Don’t Have to Be a Rocket Scientist”
Richard Branson realizes his visions can sound grandiose. "I'll often talk ahead of myself," he says. And it will be at least 20 years before he knows whether his fantasy went too far. "But by talking ahead of yourself, you then get the team to work hard to catch up," he says. "You don't have to be a rocket scientist to be able to run a spaceship company."
Alexandra Wolfe’s profile of Branson, 63, in the Nov. 1 Wall Street Journal reveals that 650 people have bought tickets to take flight on Branson’s commercial spacecraft as early as 2014. After launching from New Mexico, each spaceship will take six passengers on a two- and three-hour journey just over 62 miles from Earth.
Today he thinks space travel is where aviation was in the 1920s. The price for air travel then, adjusted for inflation is comparable to the $250,000 he is charging for his spaceflights, he says.
"My guess is 30 years from now…if enough spaceships will be built, enormous quantities of people will have a chance to go to space.”
“Climbing and Guiding is My Life”
In an Oct. 13 interview, Pemba Gyalje Sherpa tells the New York Times, “… climbing and guiding is my life, I will never stop.” He was among a group of climbers who, in early August 2008, suffered the loss of 11 climbers on K2 in the heart of the Karakoram Range in northern Pakistan. Mr. Sherpa rescued two of the climbers who were trapped above 26,000 feet. The Summit, a documentary released last month in the U.S., retells the story of the disaster and the rescue effort.
He explains that before Western explorers, Sherpa didn’t climb mountains as sport. “We trekked and herded cattle, but didn’t climb.” He explains that his climbing gear includes brands Black Diamond, Petzl and Beal. For jackets, undergarments and sleeping bags he recommends Feathered Friends, Sherpa Adventure Gear, North Face, and Mountain Hardware.
He suggests that someone interested in high altitude climbing keep hiking, trekking and climbing in a high altitude environment in the Himalayas or Andes Mountains. “Some technical training on snow, ice, rock and mixed terrain is also important.”
Mountaineering is a Peak Experience
The “glories” of mountaineering are the focus of an Oct. 28 Wall Street Journal story by Glenn K. Beaton. He writes, “Many people are trying their hand at guided climbing in later life, and with good reason. The scenery is stunning; the goals are challenging but achievable; and the rewards – physical, emotional and spiritual – are hard to top.”
Beaton continues, “The bonus: Because climbers never go faster than three miles an hour, at least not on purpose, guided climbing is safer than most people think.”
He suggests seeking guides who are good climbers with whom you have a personal relationship. They cost several hundreds dollars a day, plus at least 10 percent or more in tips. For guide recommendations, he suggests the American Mountain Guides Association (www.amga.com).
Local Hometown Climber Makes News
When local amateur climbers summit Everest, it often makes big news in hometown newspapers. Such was the case when reporter Katy Savage interviewed Killington, Vermont, native Scott Smith for her Oct. 10 story in the Vermont Standard, based in Woodstock, Vt. Smith tells of having to step over dead bodies en route to the summit of Everest.
“It was pitch dark, windy. It’s cold, I had diarrhea. I was thirsty and then I came upon this freshly dead corpse from the night before and I just thought to myself this is really, really serious.
“Encountering some of the dead bodies really makes you think of your goal and whether it’s really worth it. You start thinking of your family and your children,” Smith says.
Even with an oxygen mask, Smith remembers taking one step and then having to stop to take 10 deep breaths. “It’s almost like someone’s choking you,” he said. “You’re literally on the edge mentally and physically.”
He made the summit on May 23, 2013 with the help of Oxycodone to relieve the pain from kidney stones, which he eventually passed. (Too much information? Blame the Vermont Standard).
The Grand Rescue
The Grand Rescue is a story of a rescue that became legend. On the North Face of the Grand Teton (13,770-ft.) in 1967, seven rescuers risked their lives to save a severely injured climber and his companion.
This month a documentary film of the same name by director/producer Jenny Wilson, the daughter of rescue team member Ted Wilson, premiered in Salt Lake City. (www.thegrandrescue.com)
The rescue took three harrowing days and pushed the team to new abilities. Remarkably, the injured climber criticized those who risked their lives to save his.
As the rescuers toiled through each phase of the rescue, Gaylord Campbell repeatedly questioned their procedures and techniques. He felt the rescue was inefficiently managed and that someone else might get hurt. He questioned the use of equipment, procedures, and leadership decisions. He complained about the time it took to get off of the mountain. More than 40 years later, Campbell continued to question the choices made, according to Jenny Wilson.
Read more about this amazing story here:
http://inclined.americanalpineclub.org/2013/11/our-members-film-director-and-producer-jenny-wilson/
A Fancy Feast
Yvon Chouinard, the 74-year-old conservationist, athlete and craftsman who founded Patagonia, recalled the company’s start in a story in The Vertical, the apparel and gear manufacturer’s newspaper distributed in its iconic stores. When asked about his habit of eating canned cat food in the early days to get through a summer on a budget, he replies, “Yeah, I ate a lot of it. It wasn’t very good. But it was better than dog food.”
Later, he comments on the origin of the company name, “We put Patagonia on the map, now everybody knows where it is, everybody goes down there.
“The name Patagonia has been really good because it can be pronounced in every language. I mean, try and get the Japanese to pronounce Lululemon,” Chouinard laughs.
Genghis Khan Book Captures Grand Prize at Banff Festival
Last month, the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival in Banff, Alberta, announced the winners of its book competition:
• Grand Prize – On the Trail of Genghis Khan: An Epic Journey Through the Land of the Nomads, Tim Cope, Bloomsbury (USA, 2013)
• Mountain Fiction and Poetry – Nothing Gold Can Stay, Ron Rash, HarperCollins Publishers (USA, 2013)
• Mountain & Wilderness Literature – Non-Fiction – Everest -The First Ascent: How a Champion of Science Helped to Conquer the Mountain, Harriet Tuckey, Lyons Press (USA, 2013)
• Mountain Image – Pamir: Forgotten on the Roof of the World, Matthieu and Mariele Paley, Editions de la Martinière (France, 2012)
• Mountaineering History – James Monroe Thorington Award – The Conquest of Everest, George Lowe and Huw Lewis-Jones, Thames & Hudson (UK, 2013)
• Guidebooks – Patagonia Vertical, Rolando Garibotti and Dörte Pietron, (Sidarta Guides, Slovenia, 2012)
Learn about all the winners and finalists here:
http://www.banffcentre.ca/mountainfestival/competitions/book/#tab1
CLIMBING FOR DOLLARS
Who Needs Sponsors Anyway?
No matter how good your idea, sponsorship comes with time and a good track record, says Swedish explorer Mikael Strandberg in a newly posted blog entry. He presents three tips for landing the sponsor that can mean the difference between going or staying home. First, ask yourself: do you really need sponsors.
“If you have the funds, it is a better choice to avoid sponsors: less work, less stress and you run everything the way you want,” he advises.
Second, consider what can you offer sponsors, which all the other explorers cannot.
Finally, target only those sponsors that fit your vision. “If your expedition has an ecological theme – most have today, since this sells and looks good – why sign up with a sponsor who has a poor record on these issues and is purely commercial?”
Strandberg has some astounding expeditions on his c.v., including winter travel in Siberia with reindeer and sleds in minus 76 degrees F., and, in 1989-1992, he bicycled from Norway to South Africa – a distance of 20,505-miles/33,000 km, passing through the Sahara Desert. It took three months to push the bike through the desert, with the help of only a manual compass.
Read his post here:
http://www.mikaelstrandberg.com/2013/10/28/3-tips-of-advice-regarding-getting-a-sponsor/
Big City Mountaineers Launches 10th Annual Summit for Someone Series
Big City Mountaineers (BCM) announced the launch of its 10th anniversary season of the Summit for Someone (SFS) fundraising climb series, which is one of the top mountaineering fundraisers in the country. Funds raised through SFS support BCM’s mission to instill critical life skills in under-resourced youth through transformative wilderness mentoring expeditions.
Since its inception, 1,740 climbers have raised over $5 million through SFS to help under-resourced youth participate in powerful one-on-one wilderness mentoring programs.
In 2014, high altitude mountaineer and BCM board member Ed Viesturs plans to climb Mt. Hood and Mont Blanc to raise $200,000 for BCM youth.
SFS participants are given the opportunity to travel, climb the world’s premier mountains, and positively impact the lives of urban youth. Climbers choose from 33 separate climbs on 20 classic peaks including the Grand Teton, Mt. Rainier and Mt. Kilimanjaro, or they can create their own challenge. Sponsors of the program include Backpacker Magazine, JanSport and Black Diamond.
For more information: www.bigcitymountaineers.org/summit-for-someone, 303 271 9200 ext 303.
EXPEDITION MARKETING
Prince Harry’s South Pole Expedition: We’ll Drink to That
Glenfiddich has launched a national advertising campaign in the U.K. as part of its sponsorship of the 208-mile/335 km Walking With The Wounded (WWTW) South Pole Expedition.
The 16-day project, departing later this month, involves three teams of wounded servicemen and women on one of the most high profile expeditions of modern times, racing across 3 degrees to the Geographic South Pole, arriving approximately Dec. 17. The purpose is to show the world the courage and determination of the men and women who have been wounded while serving their countries, and to encourage the publics’ further support.
This is the whiskey brand’s second sponsorship of the WWTW Expedition, having supported the team racing to the top of Everest last year.
Ahead of the 2013 challenge, it has launched an approximately $1 million campaign with the tagline, “No Ordinary Race, No Ordinary Team.” The ads feature all four members of the U.K. team – including right leg amputee Guy Disney, left leg amputee Kate Philp, double leg amputee Duncan Slater, and arm amputee Ibrar Ali – taking on the race to the South Pole.
The U.K. team, led by Prince Harry, will compete against other, ex-soldier teams from the U.S. and Commonwealth, in a race to the South Pole.
For more information: www.walkingwiththewounded.org.uk.
See the campaign ad here:
http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/news/article/1218990/glenfiddich-champions-walking-wounded-race-south-pole/
WEB WATCH
Mallory and Irvine Captured on 1924 Film
A few months ago Huntley Film Archives posted a fascinating 10-min. film about a 1924 attempt on Mount Everest featuring eight expedition members (including George Mallory and Sandy Irvine), a line or 20 or so porters and Sherpa, mules, yaks, the Great Ice Cliff at 23,000 feet, the works.
Less than 300 people have viewed this archival footage on YouTube, so we like to think this is a rare glimpse into mountaineering’s past.
The last title slide ends rather poignantly that Everest remains: UNCONQUERED.
You can view the film here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M--qF0Fm5I8
ON THE HORIZON
Explorers Club Polar Film Festival, Nov. 22-23, 2013, New York
The Explorers Club HQ in New York will host its second annual Polar Film Festival showcasing a diverse collection of feature films, documentaries and shorts about and from the Arctic and Antarctica. The films explore the history and grandeur of Earth’s polar regions as well as the environmental challenges they are facing. Public tickets are $25 to $35.
For more information: 212 628 8383; http://www.explorers.org/index.php/events/detail/polar_film_festival_saturday
“Gift of Sight” Expedition Hosts Public Lecture, 6 p.m., Nov. 25, 2013,
The Explorers Club, New York
The public is invited to a presentation by the Dooley Intermed Foundation about the 2013 “Gift of Sight” Expedition to remote Lower Mustang in Nepal. As part of this humanitarian effort, over 700 impoverished Nepali villagers received quality eyecare from Operation Restore Vision and the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary (See EN, June 2013). The evening features talks by expedition leader Scott Hamilton and the ophthalmologists who traveled to Nepal on this important mission.
This will be one of the first public showings of a nine-minute documentary of the expedition produced by Skyship Films. Preview the film at www.dooleyintermed.org. Admission is $20; students with valid i.d. $5. Location is 46 East 70th Street on the Upper East Side.
EXPEDITION CLASSIFIEDS
Advertise in Expedition News – For just 50 cents a word, you can reach an estimated 10,000 readers of America’s only monthly newsletter celebrating the world of expeditions on land, in space, and beneath the sea. Join us as we take a sometimes irreverent look at the people and projects making Expedition News. Frequency discounts are available. (For more information: blumassoc@aol.com).
Ripped From the Pages of EN – Read the book that was spawned by Expedition News. Autographed copies of You Want to Go Where? – How to Get Someone to Pay for the Trip of Your Dreams (Skyhorse Publishing) – are available to readers for the discounted price of $14.99 plus $2.89 s & h (international orders add $9.95 s & h). If you have a project that is bigger than yourself – a trip with a purpose – learn how it’s possible to generate cash or in-kind (gear) support. Written by EN editor Jeff Blumenfeld, it is based upon three decades helping sponsors select the right exploration projects to support. Payable by PayPal to blumassoc@aol.com, or by check to Expedition News, 1281 East Main Street – Box 10, Stamford, CT 06902
EXPEDITION NEWS is published by Blumenfeld and Associates, Inc., 1281 East Main Street – Box 10, Stamford, CT 06902 USA. Tel. 203 655 1600, editor@expeditionnews.com. Editor/publisher: Jeff Blumenfeld. Assistant editor: Jamie Gribbon. Research editor: Lee Kovel. ©2013 Blumenfeld and Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN: 1526-8977. Subscriptions: US$36/yr. available by e-mail only. Credit card payments accepted through www.paypal.com. Read EXPEDITION NEWS at www.expeditionnews.com. Enjoy the EN blog at www.expeditionnews.blogspot.com.
Friday, October 11, 2013
CHAIRWAY TO HEAVEN; $150K IN GRANTS AVAILABLE
October 2013 – Volume Twenty, Number Ten
EXPEDITION NEWS, founded in 1994, is the monthly review of significant expeditions, research projects and newsworthy adventures. It is distributed online to media representatives, corporate sponsors, educators, research librarians, explorers, environmentalists, and outdoor enthusiasts. This forum on exploration covers projects that stimulate, motivate and educate.
CHAIRWAY TO HEAVEN
What exactly makes Jonathan Trappe, an IT manager at Accenture in New York, think he can fly across the Atlantic beneath a towering cluster of helium filled balloons? What makes a sailor think he can stay at sea for 1,152 days? Or a polar explorer mush across Antarctica for seven months and 3,741 miles? For 19 years this month we’ve celebrated stories of extraordinary expeditions, and this one is right up there. As in Up, the popular hit movie from Disney Pixar.
So, what makes Trappe, 40, think he can do this? Well, consider this:
• Last month, Trappe broke the record for the largest-ever manned cluster balloon flight, lifting off from Caribou, Maine, and traveling 466 miles – over 300 miles of that above open water – en route to Newfoundland. Impressive. A record, although far short of a 2,500-mile trans-Atlantic crossing, which was his goal.
Trappe landed with 60 liters of water, 38 liters of Gatorade, and 65,000 calories of food leftover – enough for a flight to Europe. CBC-TV sent a helicopter to greet him. “Nobody has built a cluster of balloons this large, and launched them into manned flight so beautifully,” he wrote afterwards. “Taller than a church steeple.” The legendary Col. Joe Kittinger, 84, was there, holder until just recently of the world’s skydive record. Video of the trans-Atlantic attempt can be seen on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uWBU7wpIlg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B7M6sSN1BQ
• In June 2008, Trappe, who is single, took a regular office chair from Accenture, a standard Steelcase Uno, tied it beneath 55 8-ft. balloons, and flew it to 15,000 feet. “I washed it off, then returned it to work. They would have never known, except it was in all the papers,” he tells EN.
• Trappe was hired by Disney Pixar in spring 2009 to participate in a 20-market promotion tour, flying his multi-colored craft above a small house to help promote the theatrical film Up in which the central character, Carl Fredricksen, strapped hundreds of equally bright balloons to his house to transport it from the U.S. to South America.
• Then in May 2010, he crossed the English Channel in a cluster balloon flight, beneath 55 balloons ranging in size from 5-1/2- to 8-1/2 feet.
• Another test flight was flown in Mexico in 2012, where he logged 118 miles at a maximum altitude of 20,000 feet over a period of 7-1/2 hours.
If anyone can cross the Atlantic under a multi-cell cluster balloon system, our money is on Jonathan Trappe. A licensed pilot, and builder of the aircraft, it took over a year of FAA applications to get the system certified as a federally registered aircraft with an airworthiness certificate. To date, his $500,000-plus project is largely self-funded. Sponsorship support would speed the next attempt along, but he’s not actively looking for dollars. He’s too busy sweating over the details for another trans-Atlantic attempt next summer.
“Cluster flight, honestly, is not something that will catch on,” he tells us. “It takes an immense amount of preparation and planning for these ephemeral moments in the sky. There are more practical ways to get from point A to point B. But it’s a gorgeous and fantastic way of flight.”
He adds, “We had exceptional exposure from our trans-Atlantic effort this year, and a successful crossing would be a world-wide event; even our flight this season, which was well short of my goal, generated national news and front pages around the world. Nonetheless, it takes a very specific sponsor to enable this type of flight ¬– someone that is not risk adverse.”
Between now and next summer when the trans-Atlantic weather window opens July 1, Trappe will be testing a new cluster balloon system. First unmanned, then manned – like a famous character in a Disney cartoon.
(For more information: www.clusterballoon.com)
BRITS ATTEMPT TO COMPLETE SCOTT EXPEDITION
British polar explorers Ben Saunders, 36, and Tarka L'Herpiniere, 32, hope to complete Captain Robert F. Scott's ill-fated 1910-12 expedition, taking them on an unsupported 1,800-mile roundtrip journey from the edge of Antarctica to the South Pole.
If successful, they will be the first people to complete the return journey that Captain Scott died attempting more than 100 years ago.
Saunders tells the U.K’s Telegraph (Oct. 9), "Completing Scott's Terra Nova Expedition is a lifelong dream of mine and I'm so excited to be standing here today about to embark on the journey with Tarka.
“Captain Scott and his men died having covered almost 1,600 miles on the Terra Nova Expedition, and this feat has never been surpassed. In many ways, their journey remains the high watermark of human endeavour in the harshest environment on the planet.”
Saunders and L'Herpiniere will walk an average 9-1/2 hours each day and are expected to take 110 days to complete the expedition and will face temperatures as low as minus 58 degrees F.
Departing from Scott's wooden hut on the north shore of Cape Evans on Ross Island, Antarctica, they will traverse the Ross Ice Shelf, climb up to the Beardmore Glacier, cross the Antarctica Plateau to the South Pole before coming back.
The explorers also hope to set a new benchmark in the use of expedition technology. Videos will be uploaded, along with photos, blogs and key data recorded in near real-time as the trip progresses. (www.scottexpedition.com/blog).
EXPEDITION NOTES
Rainforest Expedition Discovers 60 New Species
A recent expedition in the rainforest wilderness of Suriname resulted in the discovery of a whopping 60 new species. The northern South American nation is home to some of the most remote and uncharted territory left on earth. Leeanne Alonso, an expedition leader with the Global Wildlife Conservation, said, “I have conducted expeditions all over the world, but never have I seen such beautiful, pristine forests so untouched by humans.”
As sensitive frog populations have been suffering from fungus infections and polluted habitats around the world, the research team was particularly excited to find six new frog species in the Suriname forests.
Also discovered were 39 species of small mammals, including rodents, bats and opossums. Small animals such as these are directly linked to forest health as they eat and disperse seeds. The country of Suriname, due in part to these furry critters, has maintained an amazing 95% of its natural forests.
The nation is part of the South American Guiana Shield wilderness, which contains 24% of the earth’s rainforest.
According to expedition leader Trond Larsen, the Suriname wilderness offers a valuable chance for learning and protection. He said, “Suriname is one of the last places where an opportunity still exists to conserve massive tracts of untouched forest and pristine rivers where biodiversity is thriving.” (www.globalwildlife.org)
Climber Finds Treasure Trove off Mont Blanc
A French climber scaling a glacier off Mont Blanc stumbled across a treasure trove of emeralds, rubies and sapphires that had been buried for decades. The jewels, estimated to be worth up to 246,000 euros ($332,000), lay hidden in a metal box that was on board an Indian plane that crashed in the desolate landscape some 50 years ago.
The climber turned the haul in to local police. French authorities are contacting their Indian counterparts to trace the owner or heirs of the jewels. Under French law, the jewelry could be handed over to the mountaineer if these are not identified.
Two Air India planes crashed into Mont Blanc in 1950 and in 1966. Climbers routinely find debris, baggage and human remains.
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“An adventure is really just a sign of incompetence. Every thing that you add to an explorer's heroism, you must subtract from his intelligence.”
– Vilhjálmur Stefansson early 20th century polar explorer (1879-1962)
MEDIA MATTERS
Wait. What? “Pipin” Ferreras Says He’s Ready to Dive Deep Again
This month marks the 11th anniversary of the death of Audrey Mestre in 2002 at age 28, while trying to go down and up the underwater equivalent of a 56-story building on a single breath of air. It was a tragedy that roiled the free-diving community worldwide.
Authorities in the Dominican Republic, where the incident took place, ruled it an accident, but some accused her husband, Freediver Francisco "Pipin" Ferreras of negligence or worse.
Ferreras, now 51, retired from competitive diving after his wife’s death. He dissolved his company, the International Association of Free Divers, and did some photography and promotions work. But now, according to a story by Susan Cocking in the Miami Herald (Sept. 5), he is announcing a comeback: an attempt in 2014 to break the “no-limits” world record of 702 feet set by Austria’s Herbert Nitsch in 2007 off Greece.
“It’s something I’ve been thinking for years about,” he said in a recent interview at his Miami office. “People have the right to come back. I’m a fighter. I’m glad that Audrey gives me the force to do this. I cannot let her fail. If it were the other way around, I know she would do it, too,” he tells Cocking.
Ferreras initially launched a $150,000 crowd-funding campaign on the Internet to finance a 90-minute documentary on the dives. But he has suspended that effort, saying he is confident his company, CAMM Productions, can sign up private sponsors to underwrite the costs.
While Ferreras has stayed away from record attempts for the past decade, he said he has continued to train, diving and spearfishing and working out in the gym by holding his breath and climbing the Stairmaster. A year ago, he married South Beach model Nina Melo, 22, and has trained her to hold her breath past 100 feet deep and shoot fish.
The tragedy was the subject of numerous newspaper and magazine articles, two books, and several television news programs, including ESPN Films’ “Nine for IX” documentary, No Limits, that premiered last month.
Watch the documentary here: http://www.deeperblue.com/audrey-mestre-film-no-limits-available-online/
In 2007, Ferreras’ former friend and business partner Carlos Serra wrote a book, The Last Attempt (Xlibris, 2006) in which he accused Ferreras of deliberately failing to fill Mestre’s air tank so that Ferreras could hold onto his world record, stage a dramatic rescue and focus international media attention back on himself.
Read the full story here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/09/05/v-print/3606186/pipin-ferreras-says-hes-ready.html#storylink=cpy
Pair Complete First Thru-Hike of Colorado 14’ers
Coloradans Luke DeMuth, and Junaid Dawud recently hiked over 1,300 miles to complete the first-ever through-hike of all 58 of Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks, a 70-day mission that ended last month on Longs Peak (see related story below). They climbed about 300,000 vertical feet in this first of its kind mission, according to the Denver Post (Sept. 27). (Their route included the state’s five “asterisk” peaks which are higher than 14,000 feet but do not connect 300 feet from the saddle connecting them to other fourteeners.)
DeMuth and Dawud weren't necessarily aiming for records or glory, instead choosing to dedicate their project to the youth-mentoring Big City Mountaineers (www.bigcitymountaineers.org).
"It's a cool bonus to be the first, but honestly I just wanted to do it," says Dawud, who twice hiked the 2,663-mile Pacific Crest Trail. "I was just jonesing for a long hike. Being first makes it our own adventure,” Dawud tells the Post’s Jason Blevins.
Both reported gobbling ibuprofen –"Vitamin I" they called it – as they arose before dawn each morning. Their basic food staple was instant mashed potatoes, bags of pasta and dehydrated beans, and a steady stream of Snickers. A bottle of Jim Beam was another source of motivation when things get rough. (www.14ersthruhike.com)
CLIMBING FOR DOLLARS
There’s money out there if you know where to look. Here’s news about $150,000 in grants and awards from six organizations worth pitching.
The Explorers Club Supports Students
The Club’s Youth Activity Fund Grant supports high school students and college undergraduates. Its goal is to foster a new generation of explorers dedicated to the advancement of scientific knowledge. Awards range from $500 to $5,000, with the average approximately $1,500. Only a few grants may be awarded at the $5,000 level.
The Exploration Fund Grant is for graduate, post-graduate, doctorate and early career post-doctoral students. It provides grants in support of exploration and field research for those who are just beginning research careers. Awards range from $500 to $5,000, averaging approximately $2,500 each. Only a few grants are available at the $5,000 level. Deadline is Dec. 16, 2013. (For more information: http://www.explorers.org/index.php/expeditions/funding/expedition_grants)
NGS Seeks Projects in Little-Known Regions
This grant program is dedicated to funding exploration of largely unrecorded or little-known areas of the earth, as well as regions undergoing significant environmental or cultural change. It supports a wide range of projects including marine research, archaeological discoveries, documentation of vanishing rain forests, first ascents, and more. The program is editorially driven; projects must have the potential for a compelling written and visual record in order for a grant to be awarded.
Applications are also judged on the qualifications of applicants and their teams,
and on the merit and uniqueness of the project. Grants generally range from $15,000 to $35,000; a separate Young Explorers Grants (YEG) program offers $2,000 to $5,000 to individuals ages 18 through 25 to pursue research, conservation, and exploration-related projects consistent with National Geographic's existing grant programs.
Expeditions Council-supported projects are featured across National Geographic media platforms. (www.nationalgeographic.com/council).
Rolex is One to Watch
The Rolex Awards for Enterprise were created in 1976 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Rolex Oyster – the world’s first waterproof watch. They support pioneering men and women taking on major challenges in order to benefit mankind. The Awards help forward-looking individuals worldwide to carry out groundbreaking projects advancing human knowledge and well being in the areas of science and health, technology, exploration, environment and cultural heritage.
In 2010, Rolex expanded the Rolex Awards to include Young Laureates, supporting pioneers between the ages of 18 and 30. (www.rolexawards.com)
Hans Saari Memorial Fund Ski Exploration Grant (HSMF)
This award was established in 2001 following the death of Hans Saari, a renowned writer and adventure columnist who was highly regarded for his ski expeditions, many of which yielded first descents of some the world’s most challenging peaks. Grants encourage the development of skills and qualities consistent with writer and explorer Hans Saari’s approach to skiing and travel in the mountains.
It supports not only skiing and exploration in alpine environments, but also encourages creatively documenting the experience. While ski objectives do not need to be at the leading edge of ski mountaineering to receive this grant, proposals that focus on unexplored or unskied objectives will receive special consideration. Repeats of difficult and historic routes will also be considered.
The Fund may award $15,000 and up to three to five grants annually. (www.hansfund.org).
“Copp” Some Cash
Jonny Copp and Micah Dash were two of America’s leading alpine climbers, adventuring to the farthest corners of the world in search of first ascents in the purest style. These two great alpinists and storytellers were passionate about sharing their adventures with the rest of the climbing world through photographs, videos and slideshows. Tragically, in May 2009 they were killed in an avalanche in western China, along with filmmaker Wade Johnson. The Copp-Dash Inspire Award was created to support climbers who choose to emulate Copp and Dash. It offers $20,000 in grants to North American climbers for expeditions between May 1 and February 28. Winners receive multimedia instruction to help empower them to share their current and future adventures with a wider audience. (www.jonnycoppfoundation.org)
The American Alpine Club Grants: “Who Needs Toothbrushes?”
The Club’s grants and award programs – over a dozen in all – provide over $50,000 annually to cutting-edge climbing expeditions, research projects, humanitarian efforts, and conservation programs. They include: AAC Research, Live Your Dream, and Mountain Fellowship Grants, and the Lyman Spitzer Cutting Edge Climbing Awards (Ultra-light climbers cut the handles off their toothbrushes. Cutting Edge Alpinists scoff at toothbrushes... and everything else that might slow them down.) Log on to find the grant program that closely matches your project. (www.americanalpineclub.org)
WEB WATCH
Nine Minutes of Free Soloing
We were spellbound by a nine-minute video running now on Wimp.com. In it, woman climber Steph Davis calls free soling “an expression of being so in control you’ll know you can do it without falling … you have a pretty strong dialogue with fear.”
She continues, “I don’t have to be paralyzed by fear – I can just go do it.” Scenes show her 1,000-ft. ropeless free solo of Pervertical Sanctuary on the legendary Diamond, the sheer and prominent east face of Longs Peak in Colorado.
Watch the video here: http://www.wimp.com/dangerousclimbing/
Nothing Funny About Shark Finning
Chris Fischer, shark conservationist, held his own on Sept. 26 against smart aleck comedy show host Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report on Comedy Central. Fischer calls sharks the “balance keepers,” explaining, “Sharks have to keep the other predators down. If we lose our sharks, we lose the ocean.”
He says over 200,000 sharks are lost every day to satisfy the demand for shark fin soup in Asia – up to 73 million sharks a year.
Asks Colbert, “How many people are killed a day by sharks?”
“Just a couple of year,” says Fischer.
“So we’re winning,” jokes Colbert.
Explains Fischer, “A shark is like a fighter you’ve got to respect.”
See the clip here: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/429353/september-26-2013/chris-fischer
BUZZ WORDS
Stunt Whiskeys
The name given to whiskeys that go to the ends of the earth for a better, well, buzz. They have thrilling back stories, such as Mackinlay’s Shackleton Whisky that was submerged under arctic ice for decades; unmatured malt whiskey from Ardbeg Distillery in Scotland sent to an unmanned cargo spacecraft along with particles of charred oak; and Ocean Bourbon from Kentucky that was aged on a 126-foot ship for about 3-1/2 years as it traveled more than 10,000 nautical miles. (Source: Wall Street Journal, July 20-21, 2013).
ON THE HORIZON
Rival Antarctic Explorers Headline
2013 Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival, Oct. 26 to Nov. 3
Long distance ocean kayaker Justin Jones will share the stage with Norwegian explorer Aleksander Gamme at the 2013 Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival, to talk about rivalry, friendship, and the unexpected noble gesture. It’s one of dozens of events over nine days that marks the largest festival of its kind, a gathering of filmmakers, photographers, writers, adventurers, conservationists, and fans for screenings, talks, readings, and exhibitions in Banff, Alberta. The schedule also includes legendary mountaineer Apa Sherpa, the first person to summit Everest 21 times. More than 60 films will screen during the nine-day festival, and an international jury will award over $50,000 in prizes. (www.banffcentre.ca/mountainfestival/)
New York Section AAC Celebrates 50th Everest West Ridge Anniversary, Nov 9
This annual AAC dinner in New York will celebrate the first ascent of Everest’s West Ridge, considered the greatest Himalayan climb in American mountaineering history. Also on the program at the Union Club (101 East 69th Street) will be the first AAC screening of a recently enhanced and updated 3.7 billion pixel panorama of Everest composed by David Breashears as part of his Glacier Works project. Tickets are $200 for AAC members and guests. (For more information: philiperard@nysalpineclub.org)
EXPEDITION CLASSIFIEDS
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EXPEDITION NEWS is published by Blumenfeld and Associates, Inc., 1281 East Main Street – Box 10, Stamford, CT 06902 USA. Tel. 203 655 1600, editor@expeditionnews.com. Editor/publisher: Jeff Blumenfeld. Assistant editor: Jamie Gribbon. Research editor: Lee Kovel. ©2013 Blumenfeld and Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN: 1526-8977. Subscriptions: US$36/yr. available by e-mail only. Credit card payments accepted through www.paypal.com. Read EXPEDITION NEWS at www.expeditionnews.com. Enjoy the EN blog at www.expeditionnews.blogspot.com.
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