June 2007 – Volume Fourteen, Number Six

EXPEDITION NEWS, now in its 13^th 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.

MIKE HORN PLANS TOP TO BOTTOM CIRCUMNAVIGATION

Explorer and adventurer Mike Horn is planning a three-year circumnavigation of the world starting in March 2008. This will be accomplished without any motor-powered transport, over the North Pole and South Pole, crossing the seven continents, passing numerous islands and sailing across several oceans.

The 2008-2011 Global Expedition will be divided into seven stages. Each stage will represent one of the seven continents (Africa, Europe, North America, South America, Australasia, Asia and Antarctica). Means of transport will include sailing, walking, canoeing, kayaking, kite surfing, walking under water, skiing and any locomotion using animals where available and where necessary.

Mike Horn was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1966. After studying Human Movement Science at the University of Stellenbosch, he left South Africa in 1990 to travel to Europe, where he started work as a ski instructor, river and canyoning guide.

In 1991, he left for a paragliding and rafting expedition in the Peruvian Andes. On his return he was asked to become a member of the "Sector No Limits" sports team, and shortly afterwards descended the Mont Blanc Glacier on a body board, ending at the French Riviera.

In 1995, Mike opened the "No Limits" Outdoor Activity Sports Centre in Switzerland. It was during this time that Mike broke the world record for the highest descent (72 feet) of a waterfall with a hydrospeed, on the Pacuare River in Costa Rica. A hydrospeed is sort of a kick board on steroids; you hold onto this river float for dear life while wearing a wetsuit, helmet, PFD and fins.

In 1997, Mike launched his first big expedition: the six-month solo traverse of the South American continent. He left on foot from the Pacific Ocean and climbed to the source of the Amazon River high in the Peruvian Andes. From here he descended the 7,000 km of the Amazon river on a hydrospeed, until he reached the Atlantic Ocean.

In 1999, Mike launched another big adventure: the circumnavigation of the world along the equator. He baptized the expedition "Latitude Zero," traveling alone around the world in the 17 months from June 1999 to October 2000, and without any form of motorized transport.

The next expedition was in 2002, when Horn attempted a solo and unassisted crossing of the North Pole. Much to his disappointment, this trip was aborted 45 days later because of bad frostbite to his fingers.

One month after having the tips of his fingers amputated, Horn set off again, and this time on his biggest adventure: the circumnavigation of the Arctic Circle, solo and without the aid of any motorized transport or dogs. This expedition was called "Arktos" and took ornHorn a little over two years to complete, once again setting another record by being the first ever person to complete, non-stop, the 20,000 km route around the Arctic Circle, enduring two harsh Arctic winters with temperatures reaching as low as minus 76^o F.

With still a strong desire to reach the North Pole itself, Horn - along with Norwegian explorer Borge Ousland - decided to reach the North Pole on foot. On March 23, 2006, after 60 days and 5 hours of walking, Horn and Ousland finally accomplished what they set out to achieve. They are reportedly the first people ever to walk to the North Pole in the sunless Arctic winter, walking 10-12 hours a day pulling their sledges laden with 353 lbs. of equipment in the extreme Arctic temperatures and in 24 hours of complete darkness for the majority of the expedition.

Horn lives in Switzerland with his wife, Cathy, and two daughters, Annika and Jessica (14 and 12 years old). (For more information: www.MikeHorn.com)

EVEREST ROUND UP

Everest has become way too popular, and the expeditions too numerous, for us to ever cover it completely. If you need a blow-by-blow of every footstep, see everestnews.com or mounteverest.net. Still, the mountain and its appeal continue to fascinate us. Here's a round up of some of the more interesting people and projects this year:

Apa's Achievement – A veteran Sherpa guide scaled Mount Everest for a record 17th time last month, beating his own previous record, mountaineering officials said. Mountaineering legend Apa, who goes by one name, reached the 29,035-foot summit with seven other Sherpas and a Western climber, said Ang Tshering, president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association. Apa, 46, is one of the most respected climbers in the mountaineering community. His closest competitor - fellow Sherpa guide Chewang Nima, 41 - scaled the peak a 14th time last year.

Apa was leading the SuperSherpas Expedition (see related story) on a charity climb to raise education funds for children of the Nepalese mountain guides. He and his teammates had set out to make a documentary about the climb and all money raised will go toward providing better education and health care for children in their community at the foothills of the mountain.

SuperSherpas – "We are on the summit. We are all on the summit." Two simple sentences signaled a notable feat last month when Apa Sherpa and Lhakpa Gelu Sherpa, along with four other Sherpas, reached the top of the world. Their successful summit on Everest realized a goal the SuperSherpas Expedition set to increase awareness of the Sherpa people native to Nepal who have played a role in every summit of Everest since the first in 1953, according to a story in The Salt Lake Tribune (May 16).

"If there is anything good that comes from our summit . . . our goal would be to create a more peaceful world," Apa and Lhakpa said from top. "Our second goal would be to continue in Sir Edmund Hillary's footsteps and contribute to education and improving health care in the Khumbu region and for all Nepal people in the remote regions."

A documentary film is being made about the expedition, which The Salt Lake Tribune also has chronicled for the past month at sherpas.sltrib.com with stories, a blog, photo galleries and video clips, according to reporter Brett Prettyman.

Free of constraints and obligations to get clients to the top, the Sherpas basically raced from Camp 2 to the summit, passing other climbers in tents who must acclimate to the high altitude, something the Sherpas did not have to do.

Youngest Seven Summiteer – With her successful summit of Everest last month, an American teenager has reset the bar for the Seven Summits challenge. According to 7summits.com, a Web site that tracks those who have accomplished the feat, 18-year-old Samantha Larson has become the youngest person to complete the circuit. Larson replaced British climber Rhys Miles Jones, who was the former youngest, completing the challenge at age 20. Jones's record only stood since 2006.

Larson phoned her mother halfway down the mountain to deliver the good news. The Long Beach, Calif., teen took a year off before college to climb some of the world's tallest peaks with her father, David Larson. Samantha has been climbing since childhood. She ascended South America's Aconcagua at age 13 and Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro at 14.

Sherpa-Like Endurance – When he reached the top of Everest in May, International Mountain Guides' (IMG) Dave Hahn became the only western climber to have summited Everest nine times.

He has a long history of leading some of the most difficult rescues in mountaineering history. Among them is the highest known rescue of five climbers on the North Ridge of Everest just below the summit in 2001 for which he and three other IMG guides received the American Alpine Club's David A. Sowles Memorial Award (established in 1981), according to a dispatch from Eric Simonson, IMG Director. Everest 5.5 Climbers Participate in Rescue – Denver schoolteacher Mike Haugen, 30, successfully summited Mount Everest in the early morning (Nepal time) on May 21 as an estimated 7,000 schoolchildren followed along as part of The Coleman Company Inc.'s Web-based Everest 5.5 Challenge (ColemanEverest.com) On his descent, Haugen and his teammates assisted an unidentified climber from another team, who had been abandoned at the Balcony (27,500-ft.) and was in critical condition.

In his dispatch posted just after midnight (Nepal time) on May 22, Haugen says he and climbing partner Casey Grom, had the most grueling day of their lives. "Summiting Mount Everest was the easy part," he wrote. After spending a half-hour on top in pleasant weather, they became involved in a life-or-death rescue. "Our nine-hour Mount Everest climb day turned into 24 hours of climbing with the rescue being a grueling descent with a patient to Camp 3, where we dropped her off with some very able doctors," Haugen reported.

The sick climber was left in the hands of the Caudwell Xtreme Everest Expedition (Xtreme-Everest.co.uk) whose goal at press time was to place a research team on the summit of Everest and make the first-ever measurement of the level of oxygen in human blood at this altitude.

EXPEDITION FOCUS

An Evening with the Great Explainer

Neil deGrasse Tyson, 47, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, is like the college professor we all wished we had. A talk by this esteemed award-winning author and astrophysicist is more like a performance than a lecture. One part scientist, the other space evangelist, he works the room like a star struck Shecky Greene. One minute he's doing a little dance to show how Mars, the moon and Venus tug on the earth. Then with broad hand gestures, he snaps his fingers, gazes up and motions heavenwards with his wireless mike.

During a May 16 dinner at The Explorers Club, Tyson was introduced as a "shining star ... full of the flash and dash of a comet streaking across the sky." In fact, Tyson not only has an asteroid named after him (13123 Tyson), but was honored as the "sexiest astrophysicist alive" by People magazine in 2000. ("I don't know who I could have possibly beaten out," he mused. "Maybe Stephen Hawking").

Just last month, Time named him to the Time 100 - the list of men and women whose power, talent or moral example is transforming the world. The magazine said in part, "You can think of Neil deGrasse Tyson as the Carl Sagan of the 21st century-as long as you envision a Sagan who's muscular, African American and as cool as his predecessor was geeky. While Sagan used to appear on the Tonight Show to chat professorially with Johnny Carson, Tyson trades quips with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert."

Time goes on to call Tyson, "... the undisputed inheritor of his late predecessor's (Sagan) mantle as the great explainer of all things cosmic."

At The Explorers Club, Tyson explained that the "tools of science allow us to go beyond our senses ... telescopes are like bigger eyeballs." He calls the Hubble Space Telescope, "the greatest scientific instrument there ever was. It worked its way into the hearts and minds of the public."

Tyson bragged that astrophysicists are stingy with words, using the fewest words to explain the most complex ideas. He cites as examples, "Big Bang," "Black Hole," "Sunspots," and "Red Giant." "The universe is hard enough to understand. Let's not allow our lexicon to be a barrier to that knowledge."

A stickler for detail, Tyson explained how the sky scene in the blockbuster film Titanic was wrong at one point in the movie. After the dogged pursuit of accuracy, he finally convinced director James Cameron to correct the scene in time for the 10th anniversary Titanic DVD.

Tyson defended the demotion of Pluto from planetary status. "I received a pile of letters from angry schoolchildren about it," he confided. "But only Americans care because this is Mickey's dog we're talking about. Europeans don't care and Pluto will get over it, even if the public won't."

Tyson tells Time magazine, "If we ever needed a scientifically literate population, it's now. I get enormous satisfaction from knowing I'm doing something for society."

CLIMBING FOR DOLLARS

Shipman-Tilman Picks Six – While they venture off into opposite directions on the compass and have vastly different objectives, there is a common thread running through the six expeditions that have been selected for Shipton-Tilman grants for 2007. All of them are made up of small teams of explorers, men and women who believe that reaching a better understanding of our planet is not a spectator sport with guides, pilots, and large support crews in tow.

Four two-person teams, one with three members and another with four, make up the roster of grant recipients. To help these small teams reach beyond the limits of their personal resources, W.L. Gore and Associates, inventors of GORE-TEX® fabric, is once again awarding grants totaling $30,000 to help finance the expeditions.

The annual Shipton-Tilman Grant program was established by Gore as a tribute to the spirit of adventure embodied by legendary explorers Eric Shipton (b. 1907) and Bill Tilman (b. 1897). The annual program provides funds to be divided among three to six expeditions that are most in harmony with Shipton and Tilman's philosophies. The recipients are: