April 2011 – Volume Eighteen, Number Four

EXPEDITION NEWS, now in its 18^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.

Into the Deep: Returning to the Mariana Trench

Hawkes Ocean Technologies announced this month that the experimental prototype DeepFlight Challenger submersible is being prepared to make a record 36,000-foot dive to the Mariana Trench. The dive, planned for sometime this year, is part of the Virgin Oceanic Five Dives project, a series of ocean expeditions being carried out by DeepSub LLC. Concurrently, Hawkes Ocean Technologies is prepping two Deepflight Super Falcon craft for separate expeditions: a Hawkes-led project in the Gulf of Aqaba, Jordan, and a multi-year ocean expedition, led by venture capitalist Tom Perkins.

The DeepFlight submersibles are designed and built by Hawkes Ocean Technologies, Point Richmond, Calif., a company founded by renowned marine engineer Graham Hawkes, to introduce a new generation of ultra-lightweight, cost-effective manned craft, based on the Hawkes-patented concept of underwater flight and the higher safety standards of positive buoyancy. Since the late 1990s, four generations of DeepFlight vehicles have been launched, and are now proving to be a flagship technology in enabling privately funded ocean exploration using manned submersibles.

DeepFlight Challenger, the third generation winged submersible, was commissioned in 2005 by the late adventurer, Steve Fossett, as an experimental prototype to push sub-sea technology to its absolute limits. Fossett had planned to make a record dive to the deepest point in the ocean, the Mariana Trench. The project was taken over by Chris Welsh and DeepSub LLC in 2010, who, with the support of Virgin Oceanic, is planning to dive DeepFlight Challenger to the deepest point in each of the world's five oceans. Hawkes Ocean Technologies owns the patents and intellectual property rights to commercialize DeepFlight Challenger for science, industry and adventure. (For more information: DeepFlight

EXPEDITION UPDATE

Ancient Mariners Cross Atlantic on Pipe Raft

British adventurer Anthony Smith, 85, and a senior citizen crew have sailed their tiny raft, An-Tiki, some 3,000 miles from Portugal's Canary Islands to Sint Maarten in the Caribbean, arriving in early April (see EN, March 2011)An-Tiki collected wildlife along the way, including flying fish which leapt onto the deck at night, and "a very interesting and pretty small squid," which the crew, after admiring it, ate for lunch. The four men, the youngest a mere child at age 56, subsisted variously on flying fish and peanut butter, according to a report by Alan Farnham of ABCNews.com. (Apr. 6)

They used their crossing to raise money for WaterAid, a U.K.-based non-profit whose goal is to give the world's poorest communities access to safe water and better sanitation. A WaterAid spokesperson told the Anguilla News that An-Tiki had raised enough money for the organization to improve the lives of hundreds of persons around the world. (For more information)

Uber-Sailor Reid Stowe Hits the Lecture Circuit

Extreme long distance sailor Reid Stowe, who returned June 17, 2010, after a record 1,152 unresupplied days at sea, has hit the lecture circuit. We recently caught up with him at the Riverside Yacht Club in Connecticut on Mar. 18 where he told an audience of sailors that for the first two years of his voyage, he never had time to read a single book. He worked everyday repairing sails.

"I never had time to relax, except if there was a sunset or a rainbow," he said. Any leisure time he had was spent practicing yoga, painting and in prayer. He's currently living in Long Island City, N.Y., with his fiancé and young son who was conceived during the voyage. He supports his family through sale of paintings while his agent, the Peter Miller Literary Agency, and ghostwriter David Fisher, actively pursue a book deal. "Lack of money," he says, "gives me the drive to succeed." (For more information)

Jeff Lowe's Pack Recovered After 20 Years on the Eiger

In 1991, after 9 harrowing days on the North Face of the Eiger, American climber Jeff Lowe abandoned his backpack when he couldn't find any anchors at the end of his rope. Lowe untied and left the rope and his backpack behind as he free soloed the last 50 feet to the summit ridge where he was plucked off the mountain by a helicopter, just hours before a big storm would engulf the great North Face.

On Mar. 25, Josh Wharton spent over two hours chopping Lowe's pack out of the ice and snow, high up on the North Face of the Eiger. Lowe was anxious to see the condition of the pack after 20 years on the mountain. Wharton delivered the frozen, weather worn pack to Lowe on the deck of the Bellevue Hotel at Kleine Scheidegg, Switzerland.

Lowe was relieved to have this bit of unfinished business taken care of after all these years. Leaving the pack was contrary to Lowe's Alpine Style ascents, but necessary for his own survival on that day.

Lowe was in the region filming Metanoia on the North Face of the Eiger (see EN, January, 2011) Support and sponsorship is still needed to complete the film. (For more information: see the video clip at http://vimeo.com/21548239; for a list of contents, see our blog entry at www.expeditionnews.blogspot.com; www.jefflowemovie.com)

Shackleton's Whisky: "Delicious"

A Glasgow distillery is betting that a whole lot of people will want to sip the Scotch that Sir Ernest Shackleton had with him on his Antarctic adventure. Three crates of the explorer's whisky spent a century forgotten and frozen to the rock underneath the hut he used as a staging ground for his attempt at the South Pole (see EN, August 2010) Once they were discovered, it took another four years of strategizing before the crates could be safely removed, a sojourn in New Zealand where the bottles were thawed under precise laboratory conditions, a private jet ride back to Scotland, and eight weeks of exacting analysis. Now Shackleton's Antarctic whisky has been recreated and is ready for mere mortals to drink.

Whyte & Mackay, the company that now owns the distillery that made Shackleton's spirit, announced this month that it had tasted the original blend, deemed it delicious and created "an exact replica."

Fifty thousand bottles will go on sale for $160, with 5 percent of each sale being donated to the New Zealand nonprofit responsible for conserving Shackleton's hut, according to Whyte & Mackay Master Blender Richard "The Nose" Paterson. His tasting notes reveal Shackleton's Scotch has "delicate aromas of crushed apple, pear and fresh pineapple. It has a whisper of marmalade, cinnamon and a tease of smoke, ginger and musovado sugar."

Makes the thirstier members of the EN staff wonder whether you drink it or eat it.

EXPEDITION NOTES

Explorers Club Annual Dinner Attracts the Brightest and Bravest to the Waldorf

The Explorers Club 107th annual dinner at the Waldorf=Astoria in New York on Mar. 19 was packed with a who's who of exploration, including astronauts, mountain climbers, an ant expert, naturalists, ethnobotanists,and all matter of scientists, researchers and authors. The theme this year was Exploring 2012: The Maya Prophesy. Each talk was interspersed with The Explorers Club theme song – a stirring piece of music that makes you want to put on a pith helmet and study pygmies in equatorial Africa.

EN sat mesmerized next to two young emergency room doctors, both 28, who explained the meaning of "Lover's fracture," a condition they treat on a regular basis. Also known as Don Juan fracture, it's a fracture of the large bone forming the heel that occurs when a lover jumps from great heights while trying to escape from the lover's spouse who arrives unexpectedly. Fascinating stuff, but we digress.

Highlights of the evening included:

• Former Mutual of Omaha sidekick Jim Fowler throwing away his cane to celebrate his new knee, although still in pain: "It's like a Soviet tank drove over you for a few weeks." His animal presentation included a monkey named "Wilson," drinking coconut milk with a straw. Fowler warned, "We have things happening in our natural world today that are pretty scary. ... We humans can't survive unless we treat the other creatures with us (on the planet) in good shape."
  
  
• Edward O. Wilson, American biologist, researcher, theorist, naturalist and author, offered his praise for the 2,900-member organization, "The Explorers Club is devoted to the exciting process of exploring parts of the world unknown physically and intellectually - and that's vital to steering us through this volatile world we find ourselves in."
  
  
• The fast talking Wade Davis, the noted Canadian anthropologist, ethnobotanist, author and photographer, spoke of meeting five men in the desert who were down to their last liter of water and who, nonetheless, offered him tea. He joked about those forced to travel across the desert short of water: "The great thing about brake fluid is that it keeps you off the battery acid."
  
  
• Don Walsh, American oceanographer, explorer and marine policy specialist, said, "On Spaceship Earth, there are no passengers. We're all crew." Later in his keynote address he decried the world's fisheries that are "vacuuming the oceans," and the unfortunate fact that "we have better maps of Mars than of the world's oceans."
  
  He continued, "We can't build enough ships and enough scientists to research the oceans." Walsh, who calls himself an "inner spaceman," believes researchers need to do more robotically to study the seas so they can launch a mission to "Planet Earth."