May 2013 – Volume Twenty, Number Five

EXPEDITION NEWS, now in its 19th year, 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.


PRINCE HARRY JOINS SOUTH POLE ALLIED CHALLENGE 2013

An expedition this fall involving three teams of wounded veterans from the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Canada will attempt to raise awareness and funds for military charities by trekking to the South Pole from Novolazarevskaya Station, the Russian Antarctic research station at Schirmacher Oasis, Queen Maud Land, 47 miles from the Antarctic coast.

Prince Harry, the expedition’s royal patron, plans to accompany the team. In 2011, Harry, 28, joined a team of Walking with Wounded amputees that trekked to the North Pole, although he had to break off to attend the royal wedding of brother Prince William and the former Kate Middleton.

The team members of the 210-mile, four week Walking with the Wounded South Pole Allied Challenge will endure temperatures as low as minus 49 degrees F. and 50 mph winds as they pull pulks (custom built arctic sledges) towards the southernmost point on the globe. The expedition will highlight the veterans' courage and raise money and awareness for other veterans with cognitive and/or physical disabilities sustained in service to their nations. Each team will have an experienced polar guide.

The U.S. team is managed by No Barriers USA, a U.S. nonprofit organization founded by blind adventurer Erik Weihenmayer.

Some of the wounded joining the expedition include American Ivan Castro, who was blinded in an attack while he was serving in Iraq. The other three U.S. team members are: Margaux Mange of Lakewood, Colo.; Mark Wise of Colorado Springs, Colo.; and Therese Frentz of Del Rio, Tex.

(For more information: David Shurna, executive director, No Barriers USA, www.nobarriersusa.org, dave@nobarriersusa.org, 970 484 3633. View the official expedition website here: www.walkingwiththewounded.org.uk/southpole2013)

EXPEDITION UPDATE

114,000 Hams Communicate with Remote “DXpedition”

A 29-person ham radio expedition to Clipperton, one of the most isolated islands in the world (see EN, February 2013), included a team of 24 radio amateurs and five scientists and filmmakers from 10 countries. During ten days of occupation, the team set up and operated 10 radio stations, making a total of 114,000 individual contacts, a new record for such so-called “DXpeditions” (DX being ham-talk for “distance” or “distant”).

The team planned and carried out a variety of scientific observations and collections, including the first specimens of foraminifera, a major taxonomic group of microscopic animals important for the study of global climate. Other observations, including searches for a particular invasive ant and congenitally deformed seabirds, proved negative.

According to the project’s website, “the effort was carried out on time, below budget, with no casualties. No damage was done to the island or wildlife; the campsite was left cleaner than before the expedition.”

Read the expedition report here: www.tx5k.org

EXPEDITION NOTES

Sherpas and Westerners Battle on Everest

Ice picks were brandished in fury; rocks were thrown and blood shed onto the snow in a confrontation in late April so intense it is almost hard to believe. Three Western climbers were confronted by an angry mob of 100 Sherpas at their Everest campsite, 21,000 feet above sea level, in a bloody, unprecedented brawl.

"They told us 'Now we kill you,'" recalled Simone Moro, 35, an Italian climber who was one of the trio of Westerners. Beside him were Jonathan Griffith, 29, a British Alpine photographer, and Swiss climber Ueli Steck, 36 – one of the world's most celebrated mountaineers.

The 50-min. battle was only ended when an American woman put herself between the Westerners and the army of Sherpas, allowing the three men to flee. They all descended to base camp immediately, leaving the mountain soon after.

The fight broke out after the three Westerners appeared to disrespect the Sherpas and go against accepted climbing etiquette. They crossed paths on the Lhotse Face, a 3,700-ft.-long wall of glacial blue ice, with a group of Sherpas who were fixing ropes for the commercial expeditions that were soon scheduled to climb the mountain. When the three were perceived to be getting in the way of the Sherpas in their workplace, fists flew.

Said Kenton Cool, one of Britain's most celebrated mountaineers, who makes a living by guiding people up some of the toughest mountain ranges in the world, "If ever you've been to this country, you will know what hospitable people they (Sherpas) are.

"The attack was so out of character. You see rudeness towards them all the time, and it greatly upsets me – people are dismissive, or expect their food and clothing to be carried for them. Some of it is unintentional cultural offenses, but other times it is blatant rudeness.”

Cool continues, "They are kind and proud people.”

The British climber, Jonathan Griffith, believes he and his friends were the accidental victims – an unlucky last straw – of a more general hatred towards the rich climbers who give Sherpas so much of their living; a hatred that for financial reasons needs to be suppressed. They were angry at the "financial gap" that had opened up on their mountain, and at rolling out bedspreads and making tea for clients who hadn't even bothered to learn their names.

"These Sherpas are doing a huge amount of work to get everyone up the mountain," he told National Public Radio. "I'm sure they must look at their clients occasionally and think they're being used."

Griffith’s radio interview continues, “… you can't tell people when to climb and when not to climb. You know, this is mountaineering. It's meant to be a very free activity and that's why climbers enjoy doing it. So to be able to say the people have decided to fix the mountain on that day and that no one can climb it, is a very controversial thing to be able to say in the first place.”

Sherman Bull, a retired surgeon from Stamford, Conn., has been on five Everest expeditions, summiting in 2001. He tells EN, “I tend to side with the Sherpas on this one. But it is a sad commentary on the current state of affairs on Everest.

“The pressures of time, money and, unsustainably large numbers seem to be killing the time-honored mountaineering ethic of courtesy, consideration, and the ‘fellowship of the rope.’”

Bull continues, “If the situation is not addressed, there will be more serious
consequences than happened here.”

Late last month, the Nepalese authorities convened a peace conference at base camp, at which both sides signed a document publicly apologizing for their actions. A few days later Griffith and Steck left for Kathmandu, still shaken and vowing never to return.

Listen to Griffith’s NPR interview here:

http://www.npr.org/2013/04/30/180116787/everest-fight-reveals-cultural-chasm-between-climbers-sherpas

Couple Completes 11,700-Mile, Human-Powered North American Odyssey

Amy and Dave Freeman landed their kayaks in Key West on April 4, 2013, completing a three-year, 11,700-mile expedition across North America by kayak, dogsled and canoe. Over 80,000 elementary and middle school students from around the world participated in the expedition virtually.

The Freemans began their human (and dog) powered North American Odyssey in Bellingham, Wash., on Earth Day (April 22) 2010. The purpose of their expedition was to highlight North America’s waterways and wild places while engaging students, teachers and armchair adventurers in their journey via www.WildernessClassroom.com.

The Freemans also met directly with over 25,000 students at presentations they conducted along their route.

The North American Odyssey was sponsored by: Clif Bar, Current Designs Kayaks, ExOfficio, Go Macro, Mitchell Paddles, MTI Adventurewear, North Water Paddle Sports Equipment, Petzl, Wenonah Canoe, Wild Gift and many other companies.

Cavers Reach Remotest Point Inside Earth

A team of cavers have returned from a seven-week expedition to Sistema Huautla, a large deep cave system in Mexico. They succeeded in exploring 1,444-ft./440m into sump 9 at a depth of 266-ft./81m where the cave is entirely flooded using scuba diving equipment. Sump 9 is reportedly the “most remote point yet reached inside the earth,” according to renowned cave explorer Dr. William Stone in 1994 after he reached sump 9 but was unable to dive its depths.

The final dive made by Jason Mallinson also established Sistema Huautla as the deepest cave in the Western Hemisphere with a total depth of 5,069-ft./1,545m measured from the highest entrance to the deepest point reached by Mallinson during his dive.

A team of more than 30 cavers from the U.K., U.S., Canada, Poland and Mexico worked for many weeks hauling ropes, camping equipment and scuba gear down into the cave to a depth of 2,756-ft./840m so that a team of five cave divers could carry on the exploration of this world famous cave. The cave divers first had to swim 1,969-ft./600m underwater through two flooded tunnels to reach their advance camp (camp 6). Here they spent one week exploring sump 9 and also looking for a way to bypass the flooded tunnel which represents the current end of the system. In total, the explorers didn’t see daylight for over 10 days while they were carrying out their exploration.

The expedition which took more than two years to plan was led by British cave diver Chris Jewell who said “reaching this point was a mammoth task and I think it will be many years before someone is able to go further or deeper in this cave.”

(For more information: www.cdg-exped.org, www.facebook.com/cavedive)

QUOTE OF THE MONTH

“I've always said that if you want to stay alive in the backcountry you better learn to travel with a good woman and listen to her. If you look at the statistics of who is getting caught, injured, or killed in risky sports, it generally isn't women. Maybe they know something we don't, can communicate more easily, and aren't afraid to use the word ‘No’. Or maybe they are just more tuned-in to Nature's signals and willing to listen to the message.”

– Doug Fesler, who with his wife, Jill Fredston, has spent more than three decades evaluating avalanche hazards, predicting avalanches, triggering them with explosives, teaching potential victims how to stay alive, and leading rescue efforts in Alaska. Taking summers off, they have paddled more than 25,000 miles together around the world. For the last four years, they have been sailing south from Alaska around South America and are currently along the east coast of the U.S., with an eye on the Canadian Arctic for the summer.

MEDIA MATTERS

Rowing the Northwest Passage

An expedition row across the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic has gained the support of Irish energy firm Mainstream Renewable Power. Mainstream will sponsor the expedition, which will see four rowers attempting the 1,864-mi./3,000km journey, according to the Irish Independent (May 6).

Irishmen Paul Gleeson, Denis Barnett and Kevin Vallely, along with Canadian Frank Wolf, will set off from Inuvik in northwest Canada on July 1 and intend to row 24 hours a day, seven days a week for two to three months, working in shifts until they reach Pond Inlet in Nunavut.

The team will be making the journey in their 25ft-long customized rowing boat The Arctic Joule.

The feat will only be possible because the ice which usually makes the Northwest Passage impassable is melting as a result of climate change.

Mainstream boss Eddie O'Connor said the company was sponsoring the expedition to highlight the dangers of global warming: "This expedition allows us to demonstrate to the world that there is an answer to global warming. . . we can have our electricity supplied by renewable sources."

NASA: Next Stop Mars

NASA administrator Charles Bolden has said that a manned mission to Mars is the space agency's top priority - and told space experts 'every single moment of our time and every single dollar of our assets' should be spent on the mission, according to a posting on the U.K.’s MailOnline.com (May 6).

Speaking on the first day of the Humans 2 Mars Summit at George Washington University, Bolden said, “Interest in sending humans to Mars has never been higher.

“We now stand on the precipice of a second opportunity to press forward with what I think is man's destiny, and that is to go forward to another planet.”

Read the story here:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2320344/Charles-Bolden-NASA-chief-says-manned-mission-Mars-priority--happen-2033.html

Lead an Incredibly Interesting Life?

A major cable television network is searching for fascinating male explorers and adventurers ages 63 to 80 to star in a new docu-series. This series will follow the day-to-day lives of men who have been through amazing experiences and have lived on to tell the tales to young people of the next generation. If interested, contact Lisa Matt, lisamatt@schweet.tv

CLIMBING FOR DOLLARS

Clothing, Communications, Ophthalmic Companies Support “Gift of Sight”

From May 15-29, 2013, an expedition of ophthalmologists and eye care professionals sponsored by Dooley Intermed International, will provide free eye examinations, eyeglasses and cataract surgeries to an estimated 1,000 villagers in the remote Mustang region of Nepal.

The 2013 Gift of Sight Expedition team will examine and treat an estimated 1,000 villagers in urgent need of eye care, including comprehensive eye screening, refraction, prescription eyeglasses, cataract and ophthalmic surgeries. Expedition News will accompany the team to lower Mustang dispatching daily updates and feature coverage for our June issue.

Supporters backing this effort in addition to Dooley Intermed are: the Paul & Irene Bogoni Foundation. Also, Sherpa Adventure Gear has joined as Official Clothing Supplier. The company will provide Nepal-manufactured outdoor apparel for the team (www.sherpaadventuregear.com).

Keeler Instruments is providing assistance with ophthalmic equipment (www.keelerusa.com). Operation Restore Vision is also providing assistance (www.ismission.org/operation-restore-vision/).

DeLorme is supplying the company’s inReach two-way satellite communicator, which will help the team stay connected anywhere in the world 160 characters at a time through the Iridium satellite network (www.delorme.com).

The expedition will issue daily blogs that will be posted to www.dooleyintermed.org. See the Gift of Sight trailer here: https://vimeo.com/38847615

MEDIA MATTERS

Tall Shoulders

When Felix Baumgartner broke the record for history’s highest jump (nearly 128,000 feet above New Mexico last Oct. 14), he was figuratively standing on the shoulders of high altitude pioneer Col. Joseph Kittinger, now 84, who held the previous free-fall record of 102,800 feet set in 1960.

According to William Langewiesche’s story in the May issue of Vanity Fair, Kittinger was participating in a government research program whose purpose was to explore certain aspects of human bodies in free-fall after ejection from a new generation of airplanes capable of flying at very high altitude. Through Kittinger’s efforts, the problem of uncontrollable flat spins was solved using a small drogue parachute, about six feet across, which served to tame the spin. Ejection systems have since been equipped with just such stabilizing drogues, and countless lives have been saved as a result.

Baumgartner’s jump was financed by Red Bull for a reported $28 million for engineering, fabrication, and marketing. A record eight million peopled watched it live on YouTube.

Traveling Light

Bertrand Piccard’s $148 million attempt to build a solar-powered plane capable of circumnavigating the globe was profiled recently by Finn-Olaf Jones, writing in WSJ Magazine in April. Jones says the Solar Impulse craft – with its sleek, clean lines, white-gloss finish and rakishly angled 208-foot wings, “resembles what you might get had Steve Jobs reimagined a child’s balsa-wood glider in giant form.”

Notes Andre Borschberg, a former Swiss air force fighter ace and McKinsey & Company consultant who is the project’s CEO, “The crux to flying nonstop around the world with solar energy is being able to fly even when the sun isn’t out, especially at night.”

The solution is four specially developed lithium polymer batteries that store energy from the nearly 12,000 solar cells – cells supported by individual sponsorships of around $200 each.

The plane has held 64 test flights through Europe and North Africa – at up to 26 hours at a time. This month it will conduct flights in the U.S.

Says Jon Karkow, chief engineer for Richard Branson and Steve Fossett’s GlobalFlyer, which flew around the world in 2005 on a single tank of gas, “When you look back at history you’ll see that these leaps into new technologies might at first not look interesting, but an electric airplane like Solar Impulse will have trickle-down effects.

“Especially when you remember that we won’t always have petroleum – but we’ll always want to fly,” Karkow adds.”

Read the full story here: http://stream.wsj.com/story/latest-headlines/SS-2-63399/SS-2-220402/

Virgin Galactic Blasts Off

Richard Branson’s space-tourism venture cleared an important hurdle in late April with the first powered test flight of its SpaceShipTwo craft. The 16-second test burn is a forerunner to the start of commercial operations late this year or early 2014. The trip would send passengers about 60 miles above the Earth’s surface, at a maximum speed of about 2,500 mph. Virgin Galactic expects to charge the first 600 space tourists $200,000 for a suborbital ride, according to the Wall Street Journal story (Apr. 29) by Andy Pasztor. The next 400 thrill seekers will be charged $250,000 per ride.

Read the full story here:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323798104578452901565132188.html

High Altitude Education

The Khumbu Climbing Center, established in Nepal 10 years ago by Conrad Anker and Jenni Lowe-Anker, educates Sherpas in mountaineering skills that could save lives as they try to make a living guiding Westerners up the world’s boldest summits. According to a story by Elizabeth Miller in the Boulder (Colo.) Weekly (Apr. 18), since their first class in 2004, they’ve taught more than 700 students the basic skills of mountain travel, including inspecting equipment, tying knots, belaying, rope management and wilderness first aid. The Alex Lowe Charitable Foundation now hopes to build a community center in Phortse, Nepal, for classes and training.

“When we started teaching our classes 10 years ago, we had a number of students who had summited Everest but they didn’t know how to tie a figure eight knot, which is the simplest knot in climbing terms,” Lowe-Anker says.

“Now there’s this desire to become as current as a Western climber, so wearing helmets in the ice fall, having proper crevasse rescue equipment and knowing how to use it, wearing the latest in boots and clothing – things like that really make a difference for them.”

Read the full story here: http://www.boulderweekly.com/article-10967-high-altitude-education.html.

Learn more about the community center here: http://alexlowe.org/kcs_building.shtml

ON THE HORIZON

Innovation Everest, Royal Geographical Society, London, through June 14

This landmark exhibition examines new and innovative expedition technologies since the successful ascent of Mt. Everest in 1953. In the 1950s, many companies sought the prestige of providing prototype equipment for the expedition, requesting in return reports on product performance. From lightweight, rubberized high altitude boot protection to powdered soups, and from red crystal snow dye to high tech oxygen apparatus, the expedition’s success or failure depended on over 150 (mainly British) manufacturers. These supporters hope to demonstrate how innovation in advanced materials, clothing, wireless and other technologies could give the 1953 expedition a winning advantage.

After the expedition, these technologies were then adapted for other end-uses, from specialized breathing equipment for asthmatic children to the free-flow ink designed for airplane use.

(For more information: www.rgs.org/collections).

Public Invited to Ronne Family Dinner, June 12, The Explorers Club

Norwegian-American Finn Ronne was a noted Antarctic explorer and veteran of five over-wintering expeditions. Like his father, Norwegian sailmaker Martin Ronne, who was a member of Roald Amundsen's expedition to discover the South Pole in 1911 and the first expedition of American explorer Richard Byrd, Finn followed in his footsteps as a member of Byrd's second expedition.

Ronne's expeditions accomplished much scientific work and discovered and mapped the last unknown coastline of the world, including the Ronne Ice Shelf. On June 12, an Explorers Club Members Dinner in New York will honor the legacy of the Ronnes and will include rare photographs, excerpts from a television documentary, and artifacts from expeditions.

Non-members of the Explorers Club can attend this event as the guest of Members Dinner Chairman Daryl Hawk.

(For more information: www.explorers.org, 212 628 8383)

EXPEDITION CLASSIFIEDS

Project Himalaya – Real treks and expeditions in Nepal and Northern India. We still go exploring, are opening up the Nepal Great Himalaya Trail and alternative trekking peaks in Ladakh, as well as offering unique range of treks. We are a small operation and really care about every detail, and offer best in class treks – http://project-himalaya.com

Women’s Leadership & Adventure Summit, July 26-28, 2013, Golden, Colo. – Challenge yourself and reach your potential during a weekend of motivational speaking sessions and adventures! Choose from trekking, climbing, or paddleboarding and spend a day adventuring alongside professional athletes in the Colorado Rockies! Limited spaces available - APPLY TODAY: www.wlas2013.com

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. ©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.

Expedition News - April 2013

April 2013 – Volume Twenty, Number Four

EXPEDITION NEWS, now in its 19th year, 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.


WOUNDED VETERAN GROUP PLANS THREE RESEARCH EXPEDITIONS

In summer 2013, the Combat Wounded Veteran Challenge will conduct three research expeditions involving amputee servicemen. Their goal is to improve and further orthotics and prosthetic limb development. The projects are: Alaska Mountaineering Training Challenge (with glacier traverse); Grand Canyon Challenge; and SCUBA Coral Reef Transplant Challenge in Key West, Fla.

The research includes monitoring the rate of core temperature and skin surface temperature changes in amputees vs. able-bodied participants.

In February 2013, the Combat Wounded Veteran Challenge team returned from an expedition to Mt. Kilimanjaro where the team exceeded expectations related to data capture and research studies. It was the first-ever concentrated study at altitude concerning the effects of elevation, decreased atmospheric pressure and O2 Saturation on Traumatic Brain Injury. (For more information: David Olson, director, 727 743 7192, www.combatwounded.org)

EXPEDITION UPDATE

No Place on Earth Tells Story of Jews Who Became Record-Breaking Cavers

It's one of the least known survival stories of World War II. In 1942, 38 Jews ages two to 76 sought refuge from Nazi persecution in a vast unexplored cave in the western Ukraine. As the women and children remained underground continuously for 511 days, the men would sneak out at night to steal food. A small underground pond provided a reliable source of fresh water. Now the story we wrote about in EN in August 2008 has become a documentary called, No Place on Earth.

In 1993, an American climber named Christos Nicola, now 61, of New York, was one of the first Americans to explore a large cave system named Priest's Grotto about five miles from Korolowka. During his descent he stumbled across names written on the walls and medicine bottles, shoes, mugs, buttons, burnt wood, and railroad spikes, all seemingly abandoned years ago. At 77-plus miles, Priest's Grotto is one of the longest caves in the world.

Jump ahead to April 4, 2013, and there was Nicola in a New York theater receiving star treatment during a screening and discussion with Professor Richard Brown of NYU's Cinema Studies Department (http://www.movies101.org/).

We learn through the film that the women and children never left their two caves. Only the men went out to steal food. A glass of water, collected by cave drippings, was for a single family for a day.

In an engaging, often funny conversation, Nicola shared his amazement at the fortitude of the 38 survivors who remained underground for 511 days: “They turned themselves into world-class cavers,” he said.

Said one survivor who returned to the cave with Nicola almost 70 years later, “We beat the odds. They didn’t get us.”

Nicola also shared the caver’s credo: “Take nothing but photos, leave nothing but footprints, kill nothing but time.”

Prof. Brown called the film, “A significant contribution to history. … This film ends up haunting you, which is what every great film does.”

For more information: www.noplaceonearthfilm.com; www.priestsgrotto.com

Incidentally, in case you were wondering, when a movie ends it’s rude to walk out when the credits roll. Says Prof. Brown, “You must sit through a movie’s credits. To do otherwise – leaving too soon – is disrespectful to filmmakers.” Oops.

Nicola made us laugh when he privately advised the budding cavers on our staff, “Always make sure the fat guy is in front of you, not behind.”

The Coldest Journey Lives Up to Its Name

Sir Ranulph Fiennes returned to the U.K. last month after having to pull out of his latest Antarctic expedition. The decision was not taken lightly and was a huge disappointment to Fiennes and his colleagues, according to a statement by the Seeing Is Believing – Trans-Antarctic Winter Expedition.

Sir Fiennes was severely frostbitten when he briefly removed a glove to adjust a ski binding during his training.

In a video interview shown on Sky News, he was quoted as saying, "There's no point crying over spilt milk or split fingers but it's extremely frustrating." (See EN, November 2012).
He continues, "I've been working on this expedition and nothing else for five years." The veteran explorer may require additional surgery on his hands which were already frostbitten from a previous trip. The Coldest Journey will continue without Fiennes in hopes of achieving the first winter vehicle traverse of the continent. (For more information: www.thecoldestjourney.org)

EXPEDITION NOTES

Exploring Legends at the Waldorf

The 109th Explorers Club Annual Dinner (ECAD) on Mar. 16 was a heady evening for any fan of exploration. The Waldorf dinner, the Exotics – hors d’oeuvres of sustainable, non-endangered, but otherwise gag-inducing foods – combined with a series of “Exploring Legends” interviews during that weekend, made this one of the best ECAD weekends in recent memory. Certainly, for those of us who grew up during the Mercury space program, it was a thrill to hear from the two remaining members of the original seven Mercury astronauts, called “the best of the best” by dinner presenter Col. Joe Kittinger.

In a taped broadcast from the International Space Station, Canadian astronaut Chris Hatfield, said of Sen. John Glenn and Scott Carpenter, “we absolutely stand on your shoulders.”
The weekend received unprecedented media coverage, too numerous to list here when a simple Google search will yield over a dozen stories ranging from the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, to StarTalk Radio.
Some notable moments follow below:

• Lowest Bidders – When asked by interviewer James Clash what it felt like when he lifted off for America’s orbital flight, Sen. John Glenn joked, “How would you feel if you’re about to blast off sitting atop two million parts all built by the lowest bidder?”

What did he think about the 1983 Tom Wolfe film, The Right Stuff? Glenn said he didn’t think Ed Harris, the actor who portrayed him, was handsome enough.

Glenn believes America needs to maximize its investment in the International Space Station. “We’re not just blowing money into space to keep it up there,” he said. “The space station’s research has a lot of benefit here on earth.”

His most notable comments dealt with exploration: “To explore is curiosity in action. Any advancement ever made in human history happened because someone was curious.

“Keep curiosity at a high level by reaching out to kids.”

Glenn added, “Most exploration is adventure, but not every adventure is exploration.”

Glenn told of receiving a letter from a nine-year-old schoolboy in Illinois who was assigned to write a biography of his choice. He wrote the 91-year-old Senator, “I’m glad you’re still alive because a lot of my classmates biographical choices are already dead. I hope you write back.”

Glenn joked, “That kid got the fastest reply ever.”

• An Ordinary Man – Before Glenn spoke, Scott Carpenter, 87, slowly walked to the podium, assisted by a cane. “We were serving in our belief that pre-eminence in space was a condition of America’s freedom,” he said.
Later he said graciously of his second to orbit status in 1962, “The real reason for my flight was to prove to everyone that what John Glenn proved in his flight was possible for an ordinary man to do.”
Carpenter, known for saying “God speed John Glenn” – a combination prayer and bon voyage – said his most memorable flight experience was, “the view of our home planet, a view very few of us had experienced at that time.”

• The Academy Awards of Exploration – In returning a Club flag, James Cameron, 58, who set a solo dive record in 2012, called ECAD, “the Academy Awards of Exploration.”

“I think about what Glenn and Carpenter did and it brings a lump to my throat,” he told an audience of 1,200 members and guests. “These were the guys who really were my idols.”

Of the submersible he rode to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, Cameron said, “The deeper you go, the tighter the hatch seals. You’re not going to leak. You may implode,” he joked, “but it won’t leak.

“I think of that as ‘cut to black,’” said the famed director.

When asked about so-called “lunartics” who believe the 1969 moon landing was a hoax,” Cameron said, “That belief is insulting to this country, insulting to the thousands of people who worked in the lunar program. I know about the state-of-the-art of visual effects at the time. We couldn’t have faked the lunar landing then. But we could now,” he said to laughter.

He said, “Explorers are not content to be observers. We come here to play. We seek that place that nobody has ever experienced to get away from the comfort of our own human presence and stare at the universe in the face.
“Cousteau said it best, ‘If we knew what was there we wouldn’t have to go.’”

Cameron said he’d like to return to deepsea exploration, “we’re only just getting the technology to study what’s down there. But first I have to direct two sequels to Avatar, otherwise I’ll be shot by 20th Century Fox.”

Young Explorers Beg eBay: Save the Nautilus

University of Washington researchers and two 12-year-olds recently returned from an expedition that may give new insight into the genetics and population of the chambered nautilus, a cephalopod mollusk found in the Pacific and Eastern Indian oceans.
The nautilus has remained nearly unchanged for almost 500 million years, but little research has been done on the creature, often referred to as a “living fossil.” Peter Ward, a UW paleontologist, spent five weeks in Fiji and Samoa researching the nautilus population.

Ward’s team is currently conducting genetic research on samples taken from the expedition. If the Samoan nautilus is determined to be of a different species, Ward said it would mean that every region has a distinct species of nautilus.

Ricky Dooley, one of three graduate students that joined Ward on the expedition, said preserving the nautilus is important for understanding the history of evolution because the creature was around nearly 260 million years before dinosaurs.

Two young boys from Maine joined Ward on the expedition because they also believe that the nautilus should be preserved. Josiah Utsch and Ridgely Kelly read about Ward’s work in the New York Times and learned that more than 500,000 nautilus shells were imported to the U.S. between 2005 and 2008, according to a story by Amy Busch in the UW newspaper The Daily (Mar. 31, 2013).

Utsch emailed Ward about fund-raising for protection of the nautilus, and after Ward confirmed there were no websites focused on the plight of the nautilus, Utsch and Kelly started a site of their own, raising $9,000 to buy a camera and light that would document the nautilus population in Fiji and Samoa.

Read the entire story here: http://dailyuw.com/archive/2013/03/31/news/uw-expedition-gives-insight-plight-“living-fossil”#.UVoRmq6vef4

Read the pre-teens’ petition to encourage eBay to stop selling the nautilus here: www.savethenautilus.com

Bezos Team Retrieves Rocket Engines

A recovery team funded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has retrieved two rocket engines from the floor of the Atlantic Ocean that were used to send astronauts to the moon more than 40 years ago.

Bezos Expeditions found and retrieved two Saturn 5 first-stage engines from a depth of three miles.

"We've seen an underwater wonderland – an incredible sculpture garden of twisted F-1 engines that tells the story of a fiery and violent end, one that serves testament to the Apollo program," Bezos wrote on his website.

"Each piece we bring on deck conjures for me the thousands of engineers who worked together back then to do what for all time had been thought surely impossible," he added.

NASA sent seven missions to the moon, six of which successfully carried astronauts to the lunar surface. Bezos said because the serial numbers on the retrieved engines are missing or partially missing, identifying which mission they were used for will be difficult.

"We might see more during restoration. The objects themselves are gorgeous," he added.

The engines, which were retrieved with the help of ROV’s, remain the property of the U.S. government, and will be restored and put on public display.

Bezos also is founder and chief executive of a small privately owned startup space company called Blue Origin, based in Kent, Wash., which is working on developing low-cost, reusable suborbital and orbital spaceships to carry people and experiments. (For more information: www.bezosexpeditions.com)

Team Explores Western Hemisphere’s Deepest Cave

Emily Zuber began expeditionary caving in 2007. Since then, she has walked, crawled and climbed in places that no human has ever been. This month, the caver is joining an international caving expedition in southern Mexico. While participating on the Huautla Cave Diving Expedition 2013, a British-led expedition in Oaxaca, Mexico, she will be conducting interviews and documenting experiences, anecdotes and stories.

The team of cavers and cave divers began work in February 2013 – almost 20 years after the last push on Sistema Huautla – to explore remaining leads in a cave that is considered one of the most remote points yet reached inside the Earth. At a depth of minus 5,107-ft./1,555 m, Sistema Huautla is the deepest cave in the Western Hemisphere and eighth deepest cave in the world.

Bill Steele, a world-renowned caver and one of the fathers of Huautla caving, will be on the expedition. Steele, author of Huautla: 30 Years in One of the World’s Deepest Caves, (Cave Books, 2009) has witnessed the progression of exploration over the last thirty years.

To learn more about the current Sistema Huautla project: http://www.cdg-exped.org/

Find them on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/CaveDive

Facebook for Wildlife

Word comes of a milestone in tropical forest ecosystem conservation – the one-millionth camera trap photo taken by the TEAM (Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring) Network. This partnership, between Conservation International, Missouri Botanical Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Wildlife Conservation Society and over 80 local partner institutions, works in 16 sites throughout the Americas, Africa and Asia. It acts like an early warning system for nature, monitoring changes in tropical ecosystems and report shifts in biomass, rainfall, and biodiversity density.

The data these camera traps collect not only gives an important perspective of tropical forest ecosystem health; they have produced a stunning scrapbook of wild animals in their natural habitats. It’s a sort of Facebook for wildlife. The question to resolve remains: what are these images and animals telling us about the health of Earth's dwindling tropical forests.

See video from Bwindi Impenetrable Forest: http://vimeo.com/55346388

View an album of new images:

https://ci.tandemvault.com/lightboxes/4563?tc=SUvT4XNN8#/

QUOTE OF THE MONTH

“There is then, no water that is wholly of the Pacific, or wholly of the Atlantic, or of the Indian or the Antarctic... It is by the deep, hidden currents that the oceans are made one.”

– Rachel Carson (1907-1964), founder of contemporary environmental movement and author of Silent Spring (1962)

MEDIA MATTERS

Skyrunner

Endurance athlete Kilian Jornet Burgada, 25, has begun what he calls the Summits of My Life project, a four-year effort to set speed records climbing and descending some of the world’s most well known peaks, from the Matterhorn this summer to Mount Everest in 2015, according to a profile by Christopher Solomon in the Mar. 24 New York Times Magazine.

Jornet has won dozens of mountain footraces up to 100 miles in length and six world titles in Skyrunning, a series of races of varying distances held on billy-goat terrain. He is the most visible figure in the growing “fastest known times” movement, in which runners measure how long it takes to complete geographic challenges. Among his records: a 7-hour 14-min. ascent of 19,341-ft. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.

Read the story here: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/magazine/creating-the-all-terrain-human.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Freebie

Legendary moonwalker Buzz Aldrin was given a number of new products to review in the New York Times Magazine (Mar. 24). Of the Alexander Wang leather eye mask ($95), he said quite frankly, “The very handsome leather mask that I received was too tight. I’m not sure why one would buy a personal item like this rather than take one of the free ones that you’re given on an airplane.”

CLIMBING FOR DOLLARS

The 2013 Outside Adventure Grant

Outside magazine is once again offering $10,000 to fund a bold expedition. Editors will pick finalists and then readers will select the winner. Deadline for submissions is June 1. (For more information: http://www.outsideonline.com/adventuregrant)

Metolius Sponsors Youth Climbing League

Rock climbing gear maker Metolius has announced sponsorship of the Northern California Youth Climbing League (YCL). Bringing young climbers together throughout Northern California, the YCL’s goal is to get youth excited about climbing. Metolius will provide the YCL with support and equipment to foster growth in the next generation of climbers.

With five participating gyms and multiple competitions in Northern California, the YCL offers youth a unique opportunity to compete against peers in a fun and relaxed format. With a successful 2013 youth league season just wrapping up, the YCL looks forward to growing the program for next season.

The league is presented by Metolius and Evolv, and receives support from a list of other sponsors including Clif Bar, Sanuk, Climbing Magazine and Yo! Basecamp Rock Climbing Camp. YCL participants are given support and gear from these sponsors, making participation in the season and competitions possible.

For more information: www.metoliusclimbing.com,www.norcalyouthclimbingleague.com

McNeill-Nott 2013 Award Winners Announced

The American Alpine Club (AAC) announced this year’s McNeill-Nott Award recipients. Out of 16 applicants, three grant-recipient teams will focus their talents on objectives in Canada, Nepal, and Pakistan:

• Pete Dronkers with Jonathan Crabtree – South Pillar of Lowell Peak, St. Elias Range, Canada. The team hopes to “break new ground in an obscure area and bring new information and multimedia resources to the greater climbing community.”

• Jewell Lund with Kyle Dempster – Bublimotin, or Ladyfinger Peak, which lies on the southwest ridge of the Ultar Sar Massif above the Hunza Valley, Pakistan. Their emphasis is on free climbing and leaving as little impact as possible.

• Chris Wright with Geoff Unger – Ripimo Shar (21,804-ft./6646 m), Northeast Pillar or East Ridge (Unclimbed), Rolwaling Himal, Nepal. They hope to reach the summit and establish a new route going as fast and as light as possible.

The McNeill-Nott Award seeks to preserve the memory and spirit of the late climbers Sue Nott and her partner Karen McNeill by giving grants to amateur climbers exploring new routes or unclimbed peaks with small and lightweight teams.

The annual application deadline for the McNeill-Nott Award is January 1. For more information: www.americanalpineclub.org.

Helly Hansen Supports Walking with the Wounded Expedition

Helly Hansen announced it will be the official clothing partner for Walking With The Wounded’s (WWTW) Allied South Pole 2013 Challenge in November 2013.

Walking With The Wounded, a U.K.-based charity that funds the re-training and re-education of wounded servicemen and women, stages extreme expeditions to illustrate the determination and courage of injured soldiers. The 2013 expedition will see three teams of wounded servicemen from the U.K., U.S. and Commonwealth (Australia and Canada), head to Antarctica to race against each other in an attempt to reach the Geographic South Pole.
The wounded servicemen and women are expected to cover 208-mi./335 km over 16 days, encountering temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees F.

For more information: www.hellyhansen.com, www.walkingwiththewounded.org.uk

The Explorers Club – Eddie Bauer Grants Awarded

Working in conjunction with The Explorers Club, Eddie Bauer is funding two significant grants for research and exploration. The Explorers Club-Eddie Bauer Grants seek to support cutting edge discovery and field research programs. This year’s recipients are:

• Darren Larsen, The Explorers Club - Eddie Bauer Youth Awards Winner

Larsen is a doctoral student at the University of Colorado, Boulder in the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research and the University of Iceland. His winning project is titled, “Climate Change in the Teton Range: Reconstructing Glacier Activity and Environmental Conditions at Grand Teton National Park Using Lake Sediments.” Larsen’s research is focused on paleo-climate to evaluate the timing and magnitude of Arctic and alpine glacier and environmental responses to past climate variability.

• James Herrera, The Explorers Club - Eddie Bauer Youth Awards Winner

Herrera is a doctoral student at Stony Brook University NY, International Doctoral Program in Anthropological Sciences. His winning project is titled, “Long-term Monitoring of Endangered Primates to Understand the Effects of Climate Change and Deforestation in Madagascar.”

His research focuses on the evolutionary processes that drive biodiversity, especially in primates, as well as the impact of climate change on biodiversity. He spends months at a time deep in the jungle of Madagascar researching threatened lemurs, and how deforestation threatens biodiversity.

• Rachel Ikemeh, The Explorers Club - Eddie Bauer Grant for Expeditions

Ikemeh’s project is called, “Conservation Research to assess the Population Status, Distribution and Prevalent Threats to the Critically Endangered Niger Delta Red Colobus Monkey.”

Her proposed field research in the central Niger Delta of Nigeria will attempt to explore an area of 1500km2 using a very practical and scientifically sound approach to collect critical data required for the conservation of a rare monkey on the verge of extinction. This research study is expected to increase scientific knowledge of this biologically important and unique ecosystem.

For more information: http://www.explorers.org/index.php/expeditions/funding/eddie_bauer_grants

ON THE HORIZON

Guests Invited to Explorers Club Members Dinner, May 22

The Club’s New York headquarters will host Gregg Treinish, founder and executive director of Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation, at their Members Dinner on May 22. Treinish will discuss the goals and recent projects of his organization as well as share his 7,800-mi., 22-month trek of the entire Andes Mountain Range. He was recognized the National Geographic Adventurer of the Year in 2008 for this accomplishment. Non-members of the Explorers Club can attend as the guest of Members Dinners Chairman Daryl Hawk. (For more information: www.explorers.org)

Peaks Foundation Women’s Leadership and Adventure Summit, Golden, Colo., July 26-28, 2013

Michelle Theall will open the Summit with a motivational talk about her experiences living with MS, taking risks and founding Women’s Adventure Magazine while balancing work, life and play. This intimate three-day Summit will provide opportunities for attendees to interact with outstanding speakers, corporate professionals and world-class athletes. Attendees will push themselves to their highest potential through alpine adventures including rock climbing, stand-up paddle boarding and trekking with professional guides.

For more information: www.peaksfoundation.org, www.wlas2013.com

BUZZ WORDS

Expeditionary Caving

The highly organized and sustained effort to discover, explore and document caves and cave systems. Expeditionary caving is all encompassing and includes all the hard sciences: geology, biology, hydrology, the list goes on. But expeditionary caving is also a passion, an extreme sport, a religious experience, a disease, and an obsession. It is an art and a science.

– Emily Zuber (see related story)

Yats Esool

Don’t try to Google this one. Early references are hard to find. The term is “stay loose” spelled backwards – another way Mercury 7 astronauts reminded their colleagues to remain calm. (Source: Astronaut Scott Carpenter speaking at The Explorers Club Annual Dinner).

EXPEDITION CLASSIFIEDS

Project Himalaya – Real treks and expeditions in Nepal and Northern India. We still go exploring, are opening up the Nepal Great Himalaya Trail and alternative trekking peaks in Ladakh, as well as offering a unique range of treks. We are a small operation and really care about every detail, and offer best in class treks – http://project-himalaya.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. ©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.

Expedition News - March 2013

March 2013 – Volume Twenty, Number Three

EXPEDITION NEWS, now in its 19th year, 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.


U.S. EYE TEAM BRINGS GIFT OF SIGHT TO 1,000 NEPALESE

Blindness is a severe public health problem in Nepal, especially in the relatively inaccessible areas. From May 15-29, 2013, an expedition of ophthalmologists and eye care professionals sponsored by Dooley Intermed International, will provide free eye examinations, eyeglasses and cataract surgeries to villagers in the remote Mustang region of Nepal.

The 2013 Gift of Sight Expedition team will examine and treat an estimated 1,000 villagers in urgent need of eye care, including comprehensive eye screening, refraction, prescription eyeglasses, cataract and ophthalmic surgeries.

Free eye screening camps will be held in three major village areas: Tukuche, Kagbeni and Marpha, followed by a two-day field surgery clinic with skilled surgeons providing cataract operations and related ophthalmic treatment.

Dooley Intermed International (www.dooleyintermed.org) is a New York-based not-for-profit dedicated to providing crucial assistance to those who lie beyond the reach of traditional healthcare. It has been aiding the people of Nepal for 50 years.

The expedition team includes six members from the Himalaya Eye Hospital (www.heh.org.np) in Pokhara, Nepal, including a skilled surgeon, ophthalmic technicians and assistants, three camp staff and assistants, three U.S. team members from Dooley Intermed International, plus two from ISMS-Operation Restore Vision. Also joining are 16 monks and senior students from the local Pema Ts’al Sakya Monastic Institute who have volunteered to serve as “advance team” assistants and tri-lingual translators.

In addition to Dooley Intermed, the expedition is supported by Sherpa Adventure Gear. As official clothing supplier, the company will provide Nepal-manufactured outdoor apparel for the team (www.sherpaadventuregear.com). Keeler Instruments is providing assistance with ophthalmic equipment (www.keelerusa.com).

The need for this medical mission is great, according to expedition leader Scott Hamilton, a Dooley Intermed director and vice president of Asian Programs.

“It is estimated that 80% of blindness in Nepal is avoidable or curable. The rural and highly dispersed population of Mustang is severely disadvantaged and underserved. Over 85% of the people belong to social groups classified by the Nepalese government as marginalized, disadvantaged, endangered, or Dalit (‘Untouchable’).”

There are also many, young and old, suffering from uncorrected refractive errors (nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism) that can be easily and inexpensively corrected with eyeglasses, according to Hamilton who has organized biomedical research and humanitarian and eye projects in Nepal over the past two decades.

Dooley Intermed’s 2011 Gift of Sight Expedition to a different region of Mustang was featured in a documentary titled Visions of Mustang (2012), by director Daniel Byers and produced by Skyship Films.

(See the trailer here: https://vimeo.com/38847615)

The expedition will be issuing daily blogs on Facebook and Twitter that will also be posted to www.dooleyintermed.org. Expedition News will join the team to assist in communications for this worthy cause. Sponsorship support is being sought. For more information, contact Scott Hamilton, 646 753 0020, hamilton@dooleyintermed.org.

TEAM STUDIES EFFECT OF TSUNAMIS ON ALASKAN BEACHES

In June 2013, Ken Campbell and Steve Weileman will embark on the next phase of the Ikkatsu Project to the volcanic island of Augustine in south-central Alaska. Campbell and Weileman will complete systematic beach surveys in an effort to assess marine debris concentrations as a result of tsunamis.

The first Ikkatsu Expedition traveled the Olympic shoreline of Washington in 2012. While the expedition originally focused on debris reaching the North American coast from the March 2011 tsunami, expedition members soon realized that the problem was due to much more than the remains from the tragedy in Japan.

The Ikkatsu team will circle Augustine Island, conducting surveys of the beaches and once again turn over their collected data to NOAA and other scientific organizations. In addition, Ikkatsu will be working with Oikonos (an environmental non-profit that focuses on sea birds), to develop protocol for remote study of plastic ingestion by waterfowl.

“This expedition is an attempt to understand how we are connected – one society with another – and how no matter how distant and unconnected something may seem at first glance, we are all riding on the same planet. The vast expanse of the oceans doesn’t keep us apart; it is what joins us together,” Weileman said.

Kokatat is providing the Ikkatsu Expedition team with gear including dry suits, shells, Polartec liners and PFD’s.

Following the 2011 expedition, the Ikkatsu team released a documentary entitled, Ikkatsu: The Roadless Coast (http://vimeo.com/49922487Campbell). Weileman will film the 2013 expedition for another documentary once the trip has concluded.

(For more information: www.ikkatsuproject.org)

MARQUESAS ROCK ART EXPEDITION DEPARTS FOR POLYNESIA

During the early 1900s, American archaeologists from the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, explored the Marquesas, 700 miles northeast of Tahiti, and recorded the major archaeological sites in the inhabited valleys on each island.

Starting in 1985, an archaeological team from the Department of Archaeology of French Polynesia, Tahiti, led by archaeologist Edmundo Edwards, surveyed many sites, recording close to 1,000 structures, such as house sites, temples, shrines, dancing platforms, burial and refuge caves, agricultural terraces, tuff (volcanic stone) and red scoria quarries used in manufacturing slabs, statues, and other decorations, and basalt quarries used in tool and adze manufacture.

From 1986, great emphasis was placed on surveying its rock art. Edwards, in collaboration with archaeologists Sidsel Millerstrom from Norway and Heidy Baumgartner from Switzerland, recorded 91 stone statues together with approximately 7,000 petroglyphs in the archipelago.

Whole valleys that were densely occupied in the past remain unsurveyed and only a few structures have been excavated. On May 4 to 17, 2013, a 10-person expedition organized by the Pacific Islands Research Institute in Friday Harbor, Wash., will explore and photograph recently found petroglyphs and statues and record the Eiaone Valley pictographs, according to Capt. Lynn Danaher, president of the non-profit. Volunteers are needed for their 2014 expedition to the Marquesas, and Raivavae in the Austral Islands.

(For more information: Lynn Danaher, 4islandexplorer@gmail.com, www.pacificislandsresearchinstitute.org)

EXPEDITION UPDATE

ASC Volunteers Discover New Species

Adventurers & Scientists for Conservation (ASC) volunteers have collected samples of rare diatoms that are new to science. The diatoms were collected by volunteers working with Dr. Loren Bahls, curator of the Montana Diatom Collection. Diatoms are single-celled organisms that live in nearly every aquatic environment and are indicators of climate change. (See EN, February 2013)

The new species were discovered in samples collected by Ryan Davis and Beverly Boynton, two hikers who contacted ASC because they wanted to do more with their time outside. Dr. Bahls honored their efforts by naming the new species after them: Cavinula davisiae (named after Davis) was found in a lake in the North Cascades, and Stauroneis boyntoniae (named after Boynton) was found in the Wind River Range in Wyoming.

Dr. Bahls believes there are a lot more discoveries to be made in the Northwest.

“This project gave us reasons to visit new places, and to contribute to something good while also enjoying ourselves. It's just icing on the cake that the samples I found actually brought a new species to public attention,” said Davis.

For more information: http://www.adventureandscience.org/diatom-lake.html

EXPEDITION NOTES

Climbing Couple Targets 50 Classic Climbs

Since 2010, Mark and Janelle Smiley, a married couple from Crested Butte, Colo., both ages 31, have climbed 40 of the 50 routes made famous by Allen Steck’s and Steve Roper’s iconic 1979 book, Fifty Classic Climbs of North America.

In 2013 they will attempt seven more big routes. Four of them are expedition-style climbs including: Carpe Ridge on Mt. Fairweather, Abruzzi Ridge on Mt. St Elias, West Ridge on Mooses Tooth, and Cassin Ridge on Denali.

They will also try three smaller rock climbs: South Face on Petit Grepon, Sierra Route on Shiprock, and North Face on Mt. Edith Cavell.

Their Kickstarter campaign in 2012 raised a respectable $25,016 from 163 backers.

They plan to produce HD video footage along the way. “These films are made from capturing real alpine climbing, un-altered, in real time, while the climb is happening. Nothing is staged, no scripts, just pure mountain climbing,” Mark Smiley tells EN.

For more information: Mark Smiley, 970 596 8690, mark@smileysproject.com, www.smileysproject.com

See the project’s sponsorship proposal here:

http://smileysproject.com/Committed__Fifty_Classic_Climbs_of_North_America/2013_Sponsor_Partners.html

QUOTE OF THE MONTH

“The essence of the explorer’s peculiar profession is becoming lost, severing contact with home folks, living for a time beyond the ken of kin, and returning with news of what does and does not lie beyond the boundary of the known.”

— Eric Leed writing in Shores of Discovery: How Expeditionaries Have Constructed the World (Basic Books, 1998)

MEDIA MATTERS

Swan Plans Antarctic Expedition Using Renewable Energy

Antarctica Polar explorer Robert Swan has told the U.K.’s Sky News he plans to mount a new Antarctic expedition, in which he and his team – including his now 18-year-old son – will rely solely on renewable energy to survive.
Swan, who was the first man in history to walk unassisted to both the South and North poles, will launch his new mission in 2015.

It is the latest project to come under the banner of Swan's 2041 campaign - an effort to raise awareness of the date from which global leaders can begin to reassess the international treaty that currently protects Antarctica from drilling and mining for gas and minerals.

It is expected the walk will take around two months to complete. Along the way the team will use solar and wind power to charge batteries for headlamps, cooking equipment, GPS systems and communications devices.

Read more: http://news.sky.com/story/1062842/polar-explorer-plans-totally-green-expedition

The Call of Everest

In 1963, a National Geographic Society-supported expedition reached the peak of Mount Everest – the first group of Americans to successfully summit. In 2012, a team of climbers sponsored by the NGS and The North Face and led by acclaimed mountaineer Conrad Anker attempted a Legacy Climb in honor of the expedition’s 50th anniversary.
The Legacy Expedition had two goals: to repeat the challenging 1963 West Ridge climb by a small team, and to undertake a scientific, educational project by a second team ascending the standard Southeast Ridge to the summit and doing medical, geological and geographical research along the way. Due to adverse conditions, the West Ridge team had to abandon its climb via that route.

This spring, the National Geographic Society will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1963 American Mount Everest Expedition and detail the 2012 Legacy Climb in a new book, The Call of Everest: The History, Science, and Future of the World’s Tallest Peak (National Geographic Books, 2013). A June 2013 National Geographic magazine article by Mark Jenkins will focus on problems that have developed on the mountain and how to address them.

Calling all Adventurers and Explorers

National Geographic is searching for the most incredible expeditions of 2013 to film and feature in a new blue chip series. If you’re planning to break records, conquer the impossible and redefine the limits of human potential, they want to hear from you. Tell them about yourself, your upcoming mission and how far along you are in the planning stage. Make sure to include your name, contact information and photos and/or videolinks. Submissions without photos and/or video will not be considered. Expeditions that combine adventure and science are especially wanted. Contact them at NGExpedition@gmail.com.

Explorers Club Mentioned in L. Ron Hubbard Story in Newsweek/The Daily Beast

Former Club member L. Ron Hubbard, founder Scientology, was the focus of an investigative story that ran Jan. 28 in the digital version of Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Some complimentary words were written about the Club (“the preeminent society of adventurer-scholars”) in an otherwise negative story about Hubbard. Read it here:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2013/01/28/exclusive-new-texts-from-scientology-s-l-ron-hubbard.html

Yeti Robot Warns of Crevasses

An autonomous robot dubbed "Yeti" could help explorers in the Arctic and Antarctica avoid deadly crevasses hidden in ice-covered landscapes, researchers say.

Researchers funded by the National Science Foundation have successfully tested a self-guided robot that uses ground-penetrating radar to map hidden crevasses, an NSF release reported.

Such unseen fissures buried beneath ice and snow could potentially claim human lives and expensive equipment during scientific and exploratory expeditions, the researchers said.

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Science_News/Technology/2013/03/04/Robot-can-help-in-polar-expeditions/UPI-63111362432731/#ixzz2NBviQXEu

CLIMBING FOR DOLLARS

Copp-Dash Award Names Five

The Copp-Dash Inspire Award, sponsored in part by Black Diamond Equipment, La Sportiva, Mountain Hardwear and Patagonia, announced the 2013 winners of the climbing grant 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.

In addition to providing financial support to perspective 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.

The 2013 Copp-Dash Inspire Award winners and their objectives are:

• Michael Wejchert with Bayard Russell and Elliot Gaddy. Unclimbed 4,500-foot south face of Mount Deborah (12,339 ft.) in Alaska’s Hayes Range.

• Lizzy Scully with Quinn Brett. Torssukatak Fjord, Cape Farewell, Greenland. First ascents of unclimbed, unnamed big walls and ridges.

• Mick Follari with Dylan Thomas. First ascent of central buttress of Kohe Pamir (20,735-ft.) in northeastern Afghanistan’s Wahkan Corridor.

• Daniel Harro with Colin Haley and John Frieh. First ascent of 5,000-foot west face of Middle Peak, St. Elias Range, Alaska.

• Pete Dronkers with Jonathan Crabtree. South Pillar of Lowell Peak (11,909-ft.), St. Elias Range, Canada.
(For more information: http://coppdashinspireaward.com/ or http://www.americanalpineclub.org/grants/g/5/Copp-Dash-Inspire-Award)

EXPEDITION MARKETING

USA Climbing Signs Official Shoe

Footwear manufacturer Evolv Sports, Buena Park, Calif., announced it would become the official climbing shoe of USA Climbing.

The program for the 2013 USA Climbing competitions includes the American Bouldering Series Championships this winter, and the Sport Climbing Series Championships and Collegiate Climbing Series Nationals, both in April. Evolv will be the official climbing shoe of all three of the series and will also be headlining Team Championship components in the American Bouldering Series, Collegiate Climbing Series, and Sport Climbing Series.
Evolv produces a signature line of shoes developed by climbing icon Chris Sharma.

(For more information: www.evolvsports.com, www.usaclimbing.org)

Costa Expands Support of Shark Tagging Effort

Costa, makers of performance sunglasses, announced the expansion of its partnership with OCEARCH, the leading scientific ocean research initiative charged with gathering never-before-seen data about one of the world’s most misunderstood predators, the great white shark.

The OCEARCH crew, aboard the 126-foot M/V OCEARCH vessel equipped with a custom 55,000-pound hydraulic lift and research platform, will depart the coast of Jacksonville, Fla. this spring to satellite tag as many great whites as possible. (See EN, October 2012).

As part of the mission, Costa will be on board gathering video, photographs and interview content from the expedition, providing real-time, daily video journal updates available at www.ocearch.org. In addition, Costa will follow the OCEARCH shark tagging expeditions over the next three years, compiling content into original webisodes that will begin airing online in fall 2013.

With its unique at-sea laboratory and cadre of oceanic scientists and expert anglers, OCEARCH fieldwork involves attracting, catching, tagging, and bio-sampling sharks before they are released.

To follow the OCEARCH Shark Tracker, visit http://sharks-ocearch.verite.com.

For more information about Costa: www.costadelmar.com

WEB WATCH

“Rocket Man” Collaborates on Heavenly Song

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield and Barenaked Ladies' frontman Ed Robertson premiered a song, I.S.S. (Is Somebody Singing), on CBCMusic.ca. It’s the result of a unique collaboration between the two, floating guitar pick and all.

The song was written by Hadfield and Robertson and commissioned by CBCMusic.ca and The Coalition for Music Education in partnership with The Canadian Space Agency.

It's the official song for Music Monday 2013, the first Monday in May, to promote and celebrate music education in schools across Canada.

The song was recorded on earth and in space – with Robertson and the Wexford Gleeks – ¬– the glee choir of Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts, Scarborough, Ontario – and Hadfield – performing in orbit from the International Space Station (ISS).

"Chris and I were able to write a song together while he was training in Russia for the mission that he's currently on and then we were able to record the song with him in space. It's really incredible when you think about it," Robertson told CBC News.

"When I started this band, I didn't have a cell phone and nobody had really heard of the Internet. And now I can work with a man who's in space and (we can) make a music track together!"

Hadfield is a veteran of two space shuttle missions, and will soon take over command of the International Space Station – the first Canadian to do so.

It’s an extraordinary video. Hadfield can be seen singing from within the cupola, the observatory module of the ISS. Its seven windows are used to conduct experiments, dockings and observations of Earth. At 31 inches, one window is the largest ever used in space.Hear the song here: http://musicmakesus.ca/musicmonday/

All Time 10 Expeditions

Wonder on MSN counts down the top 10 expeditions of all time. It’s a great presentation, especially for the budding explorer in your family.

See it here:

http://entertainment.msn.com/videopreview/?channelindex=4&from=en-us_msnhp&form=msnrll#/video/5d7d3c8b-90a4-45cf-b231-bcd668876ed3

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.

U.S. EYE TEAM BRINGS GIFT OF SIGHT TO 1,000 NEPALESE

Dooley Intermed’s Medical Expedition Departs May 15, 2013,
for Remote Mustang Region of Nepal


Blindness is a severe public health problem in Nepal, especially in the relatively inaccessible areas. From May 15-29, 2013, an expedition of ophthalmologists and eye care professionals sponsored by Dooley Intermed International, will provide free eye examinations, eyeglasses and cataract surgeries to villagers in the remote Mustang region of Nepal.

The 2013 Gift of Sight Expedition team will examine and treat an estimated 1,000 villagers in urgent need of eye care, including comprehensive eye screening, refraction, prescription eyeglasses, cataract and ophthalmic surgeries.

Free eye screening camps will be held in three major village areas: Tukuche, Kagbeni and Marpha, followed by a two-day field surgery clinic with skilled surgeons providing cataract operations and related ophthalmic treatment.

Dooley Intermed International (www.dooleyintermed.org) is a New York-based not-for-profit dedicated to providing crucial assistance to those who lie beyond the reach of traditional healthcare. It has been aiding the people of Nepal for 50 years.

The expedition team includes six members from the Himalaya Eye Hospital (www.heh.org.np) in Pokhara, Nepal, including a skilled surgeon, ophthalmic technicians and assistants, three camp staff and assistants, three U.S. team members from Dooley Intermed International plus two from ISMS-Operation Restore Vision. Also joining are 16 monks and senior students from the local Pema Ts’al Sakya Monastic Institute who have volunteered to serve as “advance team” assistants and tri-lingual translators.

In addition to Dooley Intermed, the expedition is supported by Sherpa Adventure Gear. As Official Clothing Supplier, the company will provide Nepal-manufactured outdoor apparel for the team (www.sherpaadventuregear.com). Keeler Instruments is providing assistance with ophthalmic equipment (www.keelerusa.com).

The need for this medical mission is great, according to expedition leader Scott Hamilton, a Dooley Intermed Director and Vice President of Asian Programs.

“It is estimated that 80% of blindness in Nepal is avoidable or curable. The rural and highly dispersed population of Mustang is severely disadvantaged and underserved. Over 85% of the people belong to social groups classified by the Nepalese government as marginalized, disadvantaged, endangered, or Dalit (‘Untouchable’).”

Hamilton explains a leading cause of blindness in Nepal is cataracts, followed by trachoma and injuries.

There are also many, young and old, suffering from uncorrected refractive errors (nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism) that can be easily and inexpensively corrected with eyeglasses, according to Hamilton who has organized biomedical research and humanitarian and eye projects in Nepal over the past two decades.

Dooley Intermed’s 2011 Gift of Sight Expedition to a different region of Mustang was featured in a documentary titled Visions of Mustang (2012), by director Daniel Byers and produced by Skyship Films.

(See the trailer here: https://vimeo.com/38847615)

According to Hamilton, “Vision problems in children create severe learning handicaps and can cause them to become social outcasts. In adults, loss of vision means forced dependence on family members or begging in order to survive. Loss of vision has devastating consequences everywhere, but particularly in a Third World subsistence-living environment.

“Restoring good eyesight benefits not just the patient, but their families and community as well.”

The expedition will be issuing daily blogs on Facebook and Twitter that will also be posted to www.dooleyintermed.org. Sponsorship support is being sought. For more information, contact Scott Hamilton, 646 753 0020, hamilton@dooleyintermed.org.

# # #
3-7-13

Photo Credit: Daniel Byers

Expedition News - NOLS Plans Denali Expedition

February 2013 – Volume Nineteen, Number Two

EXPEDITION NEWS, now in its 19th year, 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.

HAMS LAUNCH DXPEDITION TO REMOTE CLIPPERTON ATOLL

We were amateur radio operators once at EN. Truth be told, we’re still fluent in Morse code, although it doesn’t come up much in day-to-day conversation. As so-called “ham” radio celebrates its 100th anniversary as a hobby, you can find hams RVing, studying astronomy, hiking and backpacking, sailing, weather spotting, and preparing to handle emergency communications – situations where shortwave radio is often the only means of communications.

Thus, it gladdens our solder-stained fingers to learn of an expedition – actually a DXpedition (DX being shorthand for distance), leaving San Diego this month for the remote uninhabited atoll of Clipperton. The island is located 621-mi./1,000 km southwest of Mexico in the Pacific Ocean and is considered to be an important living lab to understand the ecology and impact of human activities in the Pacific. The Explorers Club-flagged project will be led by Dr. Robert W. Schmieder, director of Cordell Expeditions, a nonprofit scientific organization based in Walnut Creek, Calif.

The team hopes to conduct amateur radio conversations (or QSO’s) with up to 100,000 radio amateurs worldwide using the callsign TX5K.

Once on Clipperton, the 30-member international team will also monitor, collect and remove plastic and other debris that beaches on the island; and search for alien species (the nasty big-headed ant, algae, and insects) as they study the equilibrium of the wildlife found there. Exotic species like invasive rats were introduced by a recent shipwreck. How do they compete with local animals is one question they hope to answer.

They will also develop and attempt to fly the longest kite, potentially setting a new world record, according to Belgian Louis-Philippe Loncke who will explore the island, film and remove the plastic.
Moving all the equipment on and off the support ship is a risky challenge as the coral reef cannot be damaged and the team will have to deal with powerful surf. The island has no water – the inland lake is acid – and the sun, heat, rats and large crabs will be a constant threat.

But for the 100,000 hams around the world who compete with one another for the most countries contacted, it will be a thrill to add this remote territory to their logbooks.
(For more information: www.cordell.org/CI/)

NOLS PLANS DENALI EXPEDITION

To inspire youth of color – and particularly African-American youth – to get outside, get active and connect with nature, the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) is planning an expedition with African-American participants to summit Denali in June 2013. The longest and most strenuous day on Denali will be the summit day, a five-mile trip up and back to High Camp.

Five miles is roughly equal to 10,000 steps, thus the origin of a rallying cry for partner organization to encourage families to hike their own “10,000 Steps to Denali” in outdoor spaces near their home.

Afterwards, team members will tour public and charter schools, outdoor outreach organizations, and church groups to serve as role models, inspiring youth of color to connect with America’s wild places, according to Bruce A. Palmer, director of admission and marketing.

“Certainly not everyone wants to climb Denali, but we do think this expedition will open young people of color to opportunities for enjoying an outdoor lifestyle.”

The budget for the project is $260,000 according to the sponsorship proposal. Supporters include REI, The North Face Deuter USA, and Optic Nerve.

(For more information: www.nols.edu).

EXPEDITION UPDATE

Arctic Explorer Abandons Attempt to Solo Summit Denali

After 19 days on North America's tallest mountain, Arctic explorer and Minnesota climber Lonnie Dupre has abandoned his third attempt to become the first person to summit Mount McKinley (also known as Denali) alone in the month of January (see EN, January 2013).

As he did during his first attempt to summit Denali in 2011, Dupre reached high camp at 17,200 feet. He had hoped that after a 12-hour climb from the 14,200-ft. camp, he could make the final push to the summit. However, extremely hard snow made it impossible to build a safe snow cave and instead of getting much needed rest, he spent the night trying to keep the cave – and himself – warm. When he called his base camp at 4 a.m. on January 27, it was -35 degrees F. in the snow cave.

It was virtually a life-or-death decision for Dupre, his staff said in a statement to press. Even if he had made the summit, which would have meant a 12-hour or more travel day between 17,200 feet and the summit and back, he knew he would lack the energy or means to survive back at the 17,200-ft. camp.
Although disappointed that his third consecutive try at a solo summit in January was not successful, Dupre does not consider his expedition a failure. During the expedition, he conducted research and gathered microbe samples for the Biosphere 2 project run by Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation (see related story). The data will provide a better understanding of how climate change affects the production of living matter in extreme environments.

Dupre, a resident of Grand Marais, Minn., has 25 years of polar expedition experience, and is best known as the first to circumnavigate Greenland via non-motorized means, and two expeditions to the North Pole.
(For more information: www.OneWorldEndeavors.com).

Shackleton’s Stash Returned to Antarctic

Three bottles of rare, 19th century Scotch found beneath the floor boards of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton's abandoned expedition base were recently returned to the polar continent after a distiller flew them to Scotland to recreate the long-lost recipe, according to the Associated Press (see EN, December 2011).

Unopened bottles of the Mackinlay's whisky will be transferred by March from Ross Island to Shackleton's desolate hut at Cape Royds and returned beneath the restored hut. It’s part of a program to protect the legacy of the so-called heroic era of Antarctic exploration from 1898 to 1915.

Bottled in 1898 after the blend was aged 15 years, the Mackinlay bottles were among three crates of Scotch and two of brandy buried beneath a basic hut Shackleton had used during his dramatic 1907 Nimrod excursion to the Antarctic. The expedition failed to reach the South Pole but set a record at the time for reaching the farthest southern latitude.

Shackleton's stash was discovered frozen in ice by conservationists in 2010. The crates were frozen solid after more than a century beneath the Antarctic surface. But the bottles within were found intact - and researchers could hear the whisky sloshing around inside. Antarctica's minus 22 degrees F. (-30 degrees C.) temperature was not enough to freeze the liquor.

Distiller Whyte & Mackay, which now owns the Mackinlay brand, chartered a private jet to take the bottles from the Antarctic operations headquarters in the New Zealand city of Christchurch to Scotland for analysis in 2011.

The recipe for the whisky had been lost. But Whyte & Mackay recreated a limited edition of 50,000 bottles from a sample drawn with a syringe through a cork of one of the bottles. The conservation work of the Antarctic Heritage Trust receives five British pounds for every bottle sold.

EXPEDITION NOTES

Shackleton’s Epic Voyage Re-created

It took Adelaide, South Australia, adventurer Tim Jarvis and his five-person crew 12 days to make the 800 nautical mile sea voyage from Elephant Island, an icy chunk of Antarctica’s South Shetlands archipelago, to South Georgia Island in a bid to re-create Sir Ernest Shackleton’s epic journey to rescue his crew in 1916. Shackleton and crew endured 14 days to cover the same distance.

The recent voyage was made in a 22-1/2-ft. replica of Shackleton’s James Caird lifeboat. The next step will be for Jarvis, mountaineer Barry Gray and cameraman Ed Wardle to traverse the mountainous interior of South Georgia Island to reach the whaling station at Stromness in a journey which should take two days. At press time, they were waiting for the weather to clear.

Wardle, who has twice reached the summit of Mt Everest, said of the sea voyage, “it was the hardest thing I have ever done."

(For more information: www.shackletonepic.com)

Don’t Forget to Write

A Dutch company called Mars One has announced plans to create the first human settlement on the Red Planet in just 10 years.

Mars One plans to pick travelers to submit to a full-time training program that will conclude with a one-way ticket to Mars, where a prepared colony will be waiting.

Prospective colonists must be at least 18 years old, and the Mars One team says qualities such as resiliency, adaptability, creativity, resourcefulness and curiosity will be given high priority. All necessary skills for Mars survival will be taught to the colonists over the next decade as they prepare full time to blast into space – and history.

Mars One founders Bas Landsorp and Arno Wielders, entrepreneurs with ties to technology and space industries, said they plan to send probes and rovers as early as 2016 to prepare the planet for human habitation.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Space X founder Elon Musk is also eyeing plans to populate Mars, offering aspiring Martians a berth for half a million dollars.

(For more information: www.mars-one.com/en/)

Moon is “Awesomely Beautiful Place”

Forty years ago, at the age of 36, General Charles Duke was the youngest man to walk on the moon, and third to last. On Jan. 11 he was in The Explorers Club’s Clark Room – an intimate setting indeed for an SRO crowd of members, guests and media includingC-SPAN, which will broadcast his interview this spring.

Besides Apollo 16, Duke is known for telling Apollo 11 astronauts, as they almost had to abort their lunar landing in 1969, “You’ve had a bunch of us guys about to turn blue. We’re breathing again.”

He admitted to Club member James Clash, who interviewed him as part of the “Exploring Legends” series, that he fell on his backpack while attempting a “Lunar Olympics” high jump on the lunar soil.

“Were you afraid?” Clash asked him.

“Fear is all right if you respond with training,” he responded. Later Duke commented, “We were overwhelmed by the beauty of the moon. This is the most awesomely beautiful place I’ve ever seen.” He says the iPhone on his hip has 2,000 times the memory of his Apollo 16 computer in 1972.

“I tell folks that we didn’t spend a dime going to the moon. The money was spent employing the hundreds of thousands of people across America.”

Duke continued, “Going to the moon was a tremendously rewarding human experience for me. It’s been 40 years and I still get excited talking about it.”

Report From the Outdoor Retailer Show in Salt Lake

What the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) is to Las Vegas, that’s how important the bi-annual Outdoor Retailer Show (www.oudoorretailer.com) is to Salt Lake when over 20,000 outdoor industry representatives come to the city.

Outdoor Retailer brings together 950 brands and thousands of retailers, industry advocates and media to conduct the business of outdoor recreation through booth displays, product demos, award programs, guest speakers, and networking events such as an indoor floor hockey competition.

For those in the expedition field, this is where you go to score either cash or in-kind sponsorship from companies such as The North Face, Mountain Hardwear, or Sierra Designs.

While the manufacturers are primarily concerned about convincing outdoor specialty retailers to buy their products, they will often lend an ear to an appropriate expedition sponsorship pitch.

Here are some highlights from this year’s trade show:

• We’re Staying Right Here

Outdoor Retailer organizers, backed by the unanimous support of the Outdoor Industry Association (OIA), announced the Winter and Summer Market tradeshows will continue at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City through the end of 2016. Outdoor Retailer began hosting the tradeshow in Salt Lake City in 1996 and was previously contracted with Salt Lake through 2014. The next show, the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market, is scheduled for July 31 to Aug. 3, 2013.

• Outdoors Needs More Diversity

The NOLS expedition to Denali (see previous story) is but a small step towards increasing diversity in the outdoor experience. But more needs to be done, according to Frank Hugelmeyer, president and CEO of the Outdoor Industry Association. During a Winter Market breakfast, he said, “The outdoor industry does not look like the face of America. We are not diverse enough. We have to be much more inclusive than we are. … this is our fiscal cliff.”

By extension, the same could be said about the exploration field.

• Strayed is Back on Course

Cheryl Strayed, 44, admitted that she was addicted to sex and drugs, a topic a bit hard to take so early in the morning during her breakfast presentation to the Conservation Alliance about her book, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (Alfred A. Knopf, 2012).

“Maybe there ought to be an Indoor Retailer Show?” she joked. The bestselling author later explained how she straightened out her life by hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, beginning her 94-day journey just 48 hours after shooting heroin.

What kept her going? “The astounding and profound beauty of the wilderness, our sacred land … it contributes to who we are as humans.” She says one goal of writing her book was to tell the story that the outdoors belong to everyone.

• Turning Explorers into Citizen-Scientists

Ever been on an expedition and had a selfish feeling, like you could be doing more for the world? Then consider a partnership with Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation (ASC) based in Bozeman, Mont.

The ASC, established in January 2011, is a nonprofit dedicated to improving the availability of scientific information through partnerships between adventure athletes and scientists.

The group mobilizes an army of citizen-scientists – ambassadors of the outdoors – to help the science community gather inexpensive, reliable, and otherwise unattainable data from around the world.

“We provide adventurers with an opportunity to make a difference while they play,” said Gregg Treinish, founder/executive director. He explains that by the end of 2012, ASC has sent out over 1,000 explorers and adventurers into the field to collect data on behalf of 110 scientists.

In March, he plans to travel to Mongolia to search for feces containing DNA evidence of wolverines. “We start by looking for tracks, then scat and traces of urine,” he tells EN at Winter Market.

When asked if his parents in Cleveland thought their son would grow up to someday search for wolverine poop, he said, “They are supportive, but lose a lot of sleep because of me. Still, I do it because we as a society have put ourselves above other species. Other species deserve equal respect.”

(For more information: adventureandscience.org)

• Climbing Legend Fred Beckey Honored

Mountaineer, environmentalist and author Fred Beckey, 90, received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Outdoor Industry Association, presented by adidas Outdoor. Beckey completed more first ascents than any other human and has been a legendary figure in the world of mountaineering for more than 70 years.

(For more information: www.outdoorindustry.org)

QUOTE OF THE MONTH

An explorer who is unaware of the environment and cultures around him can do more harm than he can imagine … to exploration and to the natives of the area.”

– Sven Hedin, Swedish geographer, topographer, explorer, photographer, and travel writer (1865-1952)

MEDIA MATTERS

Lost Navy Submarine Found off Key West

The husband-wife team of Christine Dennison and Tim Taylor were profiled in the New York Times on Jan. 10 about their success in locating a previously lost Navy submarine, the R-12, that sank and was missing for nearly 70 years.

According to the story by Nate Schweber, the R-12 was built in Quincy, Mass., during World War I and launched just two months after the Treaty of Versailles was signed. It patrolled Pearl Harbor in the 1920s and the Panama Canal in the early 1940s. Tragically, it sank somewhere off the coast of Key West, Fla., on June 12, 1943.

The R-12 went down in just 15 seconds, taking 42 men with it. It was just the sixth U.S. submarine (out of 52 lost) from WWII to be found and the second in U.S. waters.



In October 2010, Taylor, an underwater explorer, searched 11 miles off the coast of Key West using a remote-controlled submarine outfitted with sonar. It generated an image of something 600 feet below the surface, about 200 feet long, shaped like a mangled rocket.

The couple plan to hold a memorial in Key West in June to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the R-12’s sinking, and have advocated for the submarine’s final resting spot to be included inside the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

CLIMBING FOR DOLLARS

Dark Snow Project Turns to Crowdfunding

There is already much excitement in the arts, media and beyond about the potential of crowdfunding – via sites such as Kickstarter and IndieGoGo – to finance projects that might otherwise have remained an unfulfilled dream. To date, though, few scientific expeditions have successfully utilized this new online tool.

The Dark Snow Project expects to change this. Jason Box, a climatologist based at the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University, is hoping to raise $150,000 over the coming months to pay for an expedition this summer to the "ice dome" of Greenland to gather samples of snow.

Dark Snow is a field and lab project to measure the impact of changing wildfire and industrial soot on snow and ice reflectivity. Soot darkens snow and ice, increasing solar energy absorption, hastening the melt of the cryosphere (portions of the Earth’s surface where water is in solid form).

At press time, Box had already raised more than $60,000, but was turning to crowdfunding to secure the remaining amount. Roughly two-thirds of this money, he says, will be spent on renting a plane to transport the team onto the ice sheet.

Box has also invited Peter Sinclair along as a team-member, who, as "Greenman3610", is probably best known for his YouTube videos on climate change (www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610).

This collaboration will ensure that anyone who has made a donation will be kept up-to-date with the researchers' progress. It will also mean the wider world will gain better insight into not just the science being conducted, but also the environmental implications of soot settling on the Arctic snow and ice.

(For more information: www.darksnowproject.org)

Polartec Challenge Grants Awarded

Last month, Polartec announced the recipients of its 22nd annual Polartec Challenge Grant, an international grant program encouraging the spirit and practice of human-powered outdoor adventure. Four adventures will receive funding and support from Polartec for 2013:

• Agnieszka and Mateusz Waligora will attempt a nearly 1,243-mi./2,000 km, three-desert bicycle traverse of the rugged Canning Stock Route in Australia, and raise awareness about the Aboriginal history of the regions covered.

• Meghan Kelly, Pip Hunt, Nat Segal, McKenna Peterson, Karissa Tuthill, and Martha Hunt will attempt to ski first descents in Greenland via a sailboat from Iceland.

• Amber Valenti, Rebecca Dennis and Sabra Purdy will embark on a 2,734-mi./4,400 km source-to-sea expedition on the free-flowing Amur River through three countries in southern Siberia – as a living reminder of what's been lost by damming, and as a celebration of wild places that still exist.

• Alexander Martin and a team of fellow adventurers will cross Asia using bikes and paddles to tell stories of the people and places traveled through, and inspire others to human-powered travel and river conservation.

In addition to the grant money, all of this year’s Polartec Challenge winners will be fully outfitted with Polartec garments, designed to keep them warm, dry and comfortable in harsh climates.

(For more information: www.polartec.com/polartec-challenge/)

EXPEDITION MARKETING

That’s One Giant Schlep

To promote a new line of products called Apollo, Unilever will send 22 consumers into space. Former astronaut Buzz Aldrin, hired as a spokesperson, announced the contest in New York last month. The brand refers to the effort as the Axe Apollo Space Academy, or AASA, to rhyme with NASA. Trips will be on a suborbital space plane, the Lynx, in 2014. The value of each ticket is priced at $100,000 and will depart from Curacao. The theme for the campaign is: “Nothing beats an astronaut. Ever.”
Says Aldrin in an online video, “Now you can become part of this privileged group and experience everything that I have.”

(For more information: www.spacexc.com)

ON THE HORIZON

Public Invited to John Glenn Interview, Mar. 16, 2013, New York

The public is invited to a major Explorers Club event on Mar. 16 featuring a live interview with Senator John Glenn at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel. The interview will be conducted by Club member Jim Clash as part of the Club’s new “Exploring Legends” lecture series.

Glenn, along with fellow Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter, will receive the “President’s Legends Medal” at the 109th Explorers Club Annual Dinner later that evening, also at the Waldorf.

An Honorary Member of the 108-year-old Club, Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth on Feb. 20, 1962, as part of the Mercury program. After leaving NASA, he won a senate seat and served for over 30 years as a democrat from Ohio. When he was 77, Glenn flew again, aboard the Shuttle Discovery, and still holds the record for oldest man in space.

Limited seating at $100 per ticket is available to the general public by contacting 212 628 8383 or reservations@explorers.org.

WEB WATCH

Extreme Bliss

What’s the best definition of extreme bliss? We’re not quite sure, but we suspect this comes close: Swedish adventurer Aleksander Gamme took this video during a long roundtrip trek to the South Pole in 2011-12. Along the way he buried excess items in snowdrifts to keep his backpack light. The video was taken on day 86 when he discovered just what he left behind. No translation is necessary. See the video here: http://t.co/4E6JHXiT

DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS

Here’s What We Meant to Say

We forgot an important word in our e-mail subject line last month. In the story about Denali climber Lonnie Dupre, we should have asked whether Denali can ever be soloed in January, not just winter. The story was correct – if Dupre had been successful climbing last month, he would have become the first person to complete a solo ascent of the iconic peak in January (see related story). We have explorer Eric Larsen to thank for this correction. The first solo winter ascent with safe return was made by Vern Tejas in 1988.

EXPEDITION CLASSIFIEDS

Discover Peru with an Explorer – Unique occasion this year to visit Peru with Yurek Majcherczyk, Fellow of the Explorers Club – author, original explorer of the Colca Canyon – the world’s deepest. Three different trips available by level of activities. From regular sightseeing trips to multi-day trekking/backpacking expeditions to the Amazon source via Colca Canyon. Continuation to Titicaca Lake, Cuzco and Machu Picchu.

Many educational lectures will be offered to the participants, as well as signed copies of Yurek's The Conquest of Rio Colca. More information will be sent on request by writing to yurek@classic-travel.com or calling 973 473 1249. Also visit: www.classic-travel.com

Yosemite Housing – Stay at Hans Florine's home in Yosemite: http://www.hansbasecamp.com. Mention you saw the listing in the Expedition News and receive 10% off.

New York-area Housesitter Available – New Yorker Maura Kinney is looking for an
explorer’s apartment or home to house sit or sublet while the owner is away on an
expedition. She’s available in New York and southern Connecticut. A travel marketing
director working in Greenwich, Kinney is also an avid equestrian. Reach her at maurakinney1@hotmail.com, 917 488 4755.

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.