February 2022 – Volume Twenty-Eight, Number Two
Celebrating our 27th year.
EXPEDITION NEWS, founded in 1994, is the monthly review of significant expeditions, research projects and newsworthy adventures. It is distributed online to media representatives, corporate sponsors, educators, research librarians, explorers, environmentalists, and outdoor enthusiasts. This forum on exploration covers projects that stimulate, motivate and educate.
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RETURNING HOME FROM GREENLAND TO CANADA
A risk management consultant and explorer named Pascale Marceau, 45, is planning next month a 1,200 km (808-mile) Arctic dogsled journey across the Nares Strait from Greenland to Canada, along the east coast of Ellesmere Island and onto Baffin Island – following the never completed return home route of the famed Qitdlarssuaq (pronounced qit-lars-suaq) migration.
The story goes like this: In the mid-1800s, an Inuit shaman named Qitdlarssuaq left Baffin Island with a small band of about 50. They traveled for nearly a decade, finally connecting with the Polar Inuit of northwest Greenland. He found the population nearly extinct; they had lost the skills for building critical survival equipment such as the bow and arrow, kayak, and fish spear.
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The arrival of Qitdlarssuaq brought a revival of these people, by reintroducing practical knowledge and expertise. To this day, many of the families in northwestern Greenland are descendants of these Inuit migrants. Qitdlarssuaq eventually decided to return home to Baffin Island, but died along the way.
Marceau plans to go back to complete his journey home, a 68-day expedition accompanied by a team that includes veteran polar explorer Lonnie Dupre.
They will document global temperature increases, sea ice disappearance, and the people who depend on northern ecosystems. The expedition budget is $60,000 and is supported in part by Lonnie Dupre, Acapulka and Baffin.
EXPEDITION UPDATE
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The Last Days of the Endurance. Ernest Shackleton’s ship trapped in ice in the Weddell Sea in 1915. Photo Credit: Frank Hurley/Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge
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Search Resumes for Shackleton's Ship
“A century after Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance sank in the waters of Antarctica, resulting in one of the greatest survival stories in the history of exploration, a team of modern adventurers, technicians and scientists is setting sail to find the wreck,” according to Henry Fountain, writing in the New York Times (Feb. 4).
With a crew of 46 and a 64-member expedition team aboard, a South African icebreaker, the Agulhas II, at press time was set to leave Cape Town, bound for the Weddell Sea. Once there, the team hopes to find the wreck and explore it with two underwater drones.
Getting there won’t be easy. Crushed by pack ice in 1915, the 144-foot-long Endurance is sitting in 10,000 feet of water. And this isn’t just any water: In the Weddell, a swirling current sustains a mass of thick, nasty sea ice that can be a match even for modern icebreakers.
Shackleton himself, whose plans to be the first to cross Antarctica were derailed by the loss of his ship, described the site of the sinking as “the worst portion of the worst sea in the world.”
Mensun Bound, a marine archaeologist, and director of exploration of the expedition, Endurance22, tells the Times, “It’s the most unreachable wreck ever. Which makes this the greatest wreck hunt of all time. We wrote about Bound’s earlier attempt in the July 2021 edition of EN.
Read the Times story here:
EXPEDITION NOTES
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New data analyzed from the world’s highest ice core confirms glaciers are
disappearing at a faster rate than realized.
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Mt. Everest’s Highest Glacier Feels the Impacts of
Human-Induced Climate Change
Data from a new paper published recently in the Nature Portfolio Journal Climate and Atmospheric Science, has identified Mount Everest’s highest glacier is now losing several decades of ice accumulation annually. The earth’s warmer climate is causing melting and sublimation (where the snow top gets removed) where the exposed ice, which is darker, absorbs more sunshine which in turn accelerates the melt rate.
The faster the ice accumulation disappears, it will decrease the capacity of the glacier to be able to provide water for the more than 1 billion people who depend on it for drinking and irrigation.
New impacts can also increase the risk of avalanches in the region.
Future expeditions to Mt. Everest could encounter more exposed bedrock as snow and ice cover continues to thin in the coming decades, potentially making it more challenging to climb.
“The sublimation is like the drip from a leaking dam and the rapid ice loss is what happens when the dam breaks,” said Mariusz Potocki, a glaciochemist and doctoral candidate in the Climate Change Institute, the University of Maine who collected the highest ice core on the planet.
“It answers one of the big questions posed by our 2019 National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Everest Expedition — whether the highest glaciers on the planet are impacted by human-sourced climate change. The answer is a resounding yes, and very significantly since the late 1990s,” said Paul Mayewski, Scientific and Expedition Lead, and Director, Climate Change Institute University of Maine, and lead author.
Read more here:
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(Photo courtesy: Eric Philips) |
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Extreme Expeditions Covered in 2022 Guinness World Records
Guinness World Records - originally the Guinness Book of Records – is the ultimate authority on record-breaking achievements. It started out in the 1950s as an idea for a book of facts to solve arguments in pubs. Today, in the exploration community, it might very well be the official adjudicator of extended, unmotorized journeys in and around Earth’s extreme points.
To verify records, the 2022 Guinness World Records worked with the Polar Expeditions Classification Scheme (PECS), a grading and labeling system established in 2020. PECS is managed by a committee of polar expedition specialists and was created by Eric Philips, founder and director of Icetrek Expeditions and Equipment, and co-founder and President of the International Polar Guides Association (IPGA).
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Records verified by PECS include:
First Solo Crossing of Antarctica
First Unmotorized Crossing of Antarctica
First Women to Cross the Antarctic Landmass
First Unsupported Expedition to the North Pole
See some of these exploration records on Philips’ Facebook page posted last fall:
Learn more about PECS here:
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2,000-year-old glass bowl unearthed in Nijmegen in the
Netherlands. (Photo courtesy Marieke Mom)
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Archeologists Bowled Over
Archeologists excavating a site in Nijmegen – the oldest city in the Netherlands, situated on the Waal river about six miles from the German border – have discovered a blue glass bowl estimated to be some 2,000 years old, in pristine condition.
The bowl, just small enough to sit comfortably in the palm of a hand, has a trim rim and a vertical stripe pattern with ridges on the outside. With no chips or cracks on its surface, the object is stunningly intact. Lead archeologist Pepjin van de Geer remarked that it was “really special,” deserving pride of place in a museum.
Read the story posted to Hyperallergetic.com (Jan. 24) here:
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Spot The Station
Did you know that you can spot the International Space Station from almost everywhere in the world, including your own backyard? As the third brightest object in the sky, it is easy to see the fast-moving orbiting lab if you know when to look up.
Sign up here and you’ll receive an email whenever it’s overhead. We tend to watch whenever it’s over Boulder except, err, not particularly between midnight and 6 a.m.
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
– Haruki Murakami (1949 –) is a Japanese writer. His novels, essays, and short stories have been bestsellers in Japan as well as internationally, with his work translated into 50 languages and selling millions of copies outside Japan.
MEDIA MATTERS
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Frank Hurley’s 1919 silent footage turns Sir Ernest Shackleton’s
grueling expedition into a travelogue with cute penguins.
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The Boss Stars in Silent Film
In a related story to news about the search for the Endurance (see above), pioneering Australian photographer and filmmaker Frank Hurley was the official witness to Sir Ernest Shackleton’s grueling expedition attempting to cross the Antarctic landmass, which lasted three years from 1914 to 1917. For most of the time, the crew was utterly cut off from news of the outside world and the expedition became an epic ordeal when, on the way there, their ship (aptly named Endurance) was crushed and sunk by pack ice.
Coming to cinemas in the UK is Hurley’s 1919 silent film record of Shackleton’s voyage – it feels like a home-movie travelogue in which the mood is surprisingly jaunty.
Towards the end of the film, just at the point when their lives have been saved and disaster averted, the film spends about 10 minutes on the adorable behavior of the penguins.
Probably the most sensational part of the entire film comes at the very beginning with Hurley’s glorious close-up portraits of his leading players, most prominently Shackleton.
We’ve been following the legendary Shackleton for almost 30 years, but have never seen these film images of the leader affectionately known as “The Boss.”
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Access the link to a clip of the silent film here:
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Avy Advice
In a popular “how to” column that appears in the New York Times Magazine, on Jan. 23 Malia Wollan provides advice on how to survive an avalanche. The advice works for explorers, backcountry skiers, snowboarders, and snowmobilers alike.
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“The snow breaks all around you like a pane of glass,” says Karl Birkeland, director of the U.S. Forest Service’s National Avalanche Center in Bozeman, Montana. And when it does, listen for what Birkeland calls “a whumpf sound,” as the slab of snow fractures.
Don’t wait to see what happens. Try to find solid ground by moving to the edge of the flow or digging into the stable base layer using your hands, ski edges or poles. If you are swept away, do everything possible to maneuver yourself toward the top of the debris. “If you get buried, you want to be shallow so your friends can dig you out,” Birkeland says.
Advice includes equipping yourself with an avalanche beacon, a probe and a shovel. Consider buying a pricey avalanche airbag, which inflates and helps buoy you up to the surface of the tumbling snow. Take a safety course.
Read more here:
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Test Pilot Col. Kittinger Inspires Belgian SpaceBoy Film
You never know what you'll learn following The Explorers Club’s Public Lectures. The Jan. 24 interview with Col. Joseph W. Kittinger, 93, revealed that the esteemed test pilot is the inspiration for a Belgian film called Space Boy (2021).
Director Olivier Pairoux delivers an unexpected first feature film for all audiences, which tells the pop and amusingly nostalgic adventures of a young boy who dreams of space.
Jim, an energetic 11-year-old dreamer, has an idol: Joseph Kittinger, a world record holder in skydiving. But when you think about it, Jim has another idol: his father, an astrophysicist who is working hard on his next trip to space.
Jim has a lot to live up to, and though he has his feet on the ground, he also often has his head in the clouds... So when he finds himself entered into a young scientist's competition at his new school, it's obvious to him: he's going to repeat Kittinger's feat. But in order to do so, he has to convince his fellow experimenter, the young Emma, who has something else in mind.
Colonel Joseph William Kittinger II (1928 –) is a retired officer in the United States Air Force (USAF) and a Command Pilot. His initial operational assignment was in fighter aircraft, then he participated in Project Manhigh and Project Excelsior high-altitude balloon flight projects from 1956 to 1960. He set a world record for the highest skydive: 102,800 feet on August 16, 1960. He was also the first man to make a solo crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in a gas balloon, and the first man to fully witness the curvature of the Earth.
Watch the trailer here:
Watch the Jan. 24 interview with this extraordinary test pilot, moderated by Jim Clash:
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Film Chronicles Climbing Death of Mother and Son a
?Quarter-Century Apart
The Last Mountain, directed by Emmy award-winner Chris Terrill, explores the forces that drove two mountaineers to their untimely deaths – a quarter-century apart. One a mother; the other her son. It’s the true story of 30-year-old climber Tom Ballard who disappeared on one of the Himalayas' most deadly mountains, Nanga Parbat, in February 2019.
Tom Ballard was a British rock climber, alpinist, and the son of mountaineer Alison Hargreaves, who perished on K2 in 1995. Mother and son, two of the greatest climbers of all time, died at almost the same age, in the same mountain range, both doing what they loved best. They now lie forever encased in the ice of the high Himalayas. Left behind to cope with the enduring tragedy are Tom’s sister, Kate, and their father, Jim.
The Last Mountain follows Kate Ballard on an emotional journey to say goodbye to her brother on Nanga Parbat. Using archive footage from 1995 and Tom's own footage taken up until the days before his death, the film explores what made Tom continue his ascent with Italian climber Daniele Nardi after the other two members of the expedition turned back.
The doc tells the story of a family who lived - and was prepared to die - for the love of scaling the world’s highest peaks, and explore what it is that drives people to pit themselves against nature at its most ferocious and unforgiving.
On Aug. 13, 1995, Hargreaves reached the summit of K2 in Pakistan, the world's second-highest peak. Just hours later, she and five others died when they were engulfed by a storm with fierce winds that rose up the mountain. She was 33.
"After her death, a backlash - fueled by a media frenzy around her death - began to mount. Some called her selfish and criticized the choice to leave behind young children to put herself in harm's way. Similar denunciations were not leveled so harshly against the fathers who died on the mountain alongside her," wrote Maya Salam of the New York Times.
When asked if a female climber needed to be tougher than a man, Hargreaves said, "I think that women, in general, have to work harder in a man's world to achieve recognition."
It wasn’t until 2018 that Hargreaves' obit ran in the Gray Lady:
Watch the trailer here:
Learn more:
EXPEDITION INK
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The Old Boys Club at Everest Base Camp
Silvia Vasquez-Lavado is a humanitarian, mountaineer, explorer, social entrepreneur, and technologist living in San Francisco. In 2014, she launched Courageous Girls, a nonprofit that helps survivors of sexual abuse and trafficking with opportunities to find inner strength and cultivate their voices by demonstrating their physical strength.
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She is a member of The Explorers Club and one of the few women in the world to complete the Seven Summits.
The following passage about the male-dominated climbing community is excerpted in Literary Hub from her book, In The Shadow of the Mountain: A Memoir of Courage (Henry Holt and Company, 2022).
“The ?rst table is already ?lled with very manly, very white, mostly balding men, cracking jokes and hollering over each other. Given that I’ve spent most of my life being afraid of men, I’ve picked an odd sport. Elite mountaineering draws out the most primal machismo characters I’ve ever seen,” Vasquez-Lavado writes.
“Not only am I late and the only woman, but I’m the only vegetarian. A lesbian vegetarian allergic to gluten – the ultimate cliché pain in the ass. I almost can’t stand myself, but I’m too hungry to dwell on it. Head down, I dig into a bowl of oily fries, rice, and more dal bhat. As the Sherpas say, ‘Dal bhat powers, twenty-four hours.’ What’s good enough for the Sherpas is just ?ne for me.
“The table thrums with testosterone—the live-wire energy of Survivor meets barroom arm wrestling.”
Read the excerpt:
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Antarctic Pioneer
Coming out in June is Antarctic Pioneer: The Trailblazing Life of Jackie Ronne (Dundurn Press) by Joanna Kafarowski. Jackie was an ordinary American girl whose life changed after a blind date with rugged Antarctic explorer Finn Ronne. After marrying, they began planning the 1946-48 Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition. Her participation was not welcomed by the expedition team of red-blooded males eager to prove themselves in the frozen, hostile environment of Antarctica.
On March 12, 1947, Jackie Ronne became the first American woman in Antarctica, and, months later, one of the first women to overwinter there.
Ann Bancroft, first woman to reach both North and South Poles across ice, blurbs, “Joanna Kafarowski's biography of Edith (Jackie) Ronne is an important addition to the tapestry of Antarctic history. All too often, women's voices and contributions are muted or absent altogether. As the first all-women's group across the ice to the South Pole in 1992/93, starting from the Ronne Ice Shelf, we had a sense of pride of the small sisterhood on this vast and remarkable continent."
The book is currently available for pre-order online.
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Sathi: The Street Dog from Kathmandu, Nepal
Travelers to Nepal are usually advised to only drink bottled water and eat hot, hot food. And never pet the monkeys or dogs, no matter how cute. Both animals are pervasive, especially in Kathmandu, the scene of a new book about a street dog who ends up being abused on Kukur Tihar, the Hindu festival dedicated to worshipping dogs.
Written by Julie Palais, an American polar glaciologist and animal welfare consultant from Virginia, Sathi: The Street Dog from Kathmandu, Nepal (Vajra Publications), is illustrated by Jenny Campbell. It includes resources listing the many groups helping street dogs in Kathmandu and provides readers with information about what to do if they encounter an injured street dog. The book is based on a true story of a real street dog from Kathmandu who is now living in Toronto, Canada.
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6th Annual World Oceans Week, June 5-11, 2022,
The Explorers Club, New York
World Oceans Week returns to The Explorers Club Headquarters, June 5-11, 2022, for a week of unforgettable, in-person programming, based upon five C's of the world's oceans: Creativity, Conservation, Collaboration, Community, and Celebration.
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Travel With Purpose, A Field Guide to Voluntourism (Rowman & Littlefield) by Jeff Blumenfeld – Covid-19 has practically put the brakes on travel, but once we get through the pandemic, travel will come roaring back and so will voluntourism. Be ready to lend a hand wherever you go. How to travel and make a difference while you see the world? Read excerpts and “Look Inside” at: tinyurl.com/voluntourismbook @purpose_book
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Get Sponsored! – Need money for your next project? Read about proven techniques that will help you find both cash and in-kind sponsors. If the trip is bigger than you, and is designed to help others, well, that’s half the game right there. Read Jeff Blumenfeld’s "Get Sponsored: A Funding Guide for Explorers, Adventurers and Would Be World Travelers." (Skyhorse Publishing).
Buy it here:
EXPEDITION NEWS is published by Blumenfeld and Associates, LLC, 290 Laramie Blvd., Boulder, CO 80304 USA. Tel. 203 326 1200, editor@expeditionnews.com. Editor/publisher: Jeff Blumenfeld. Research editor: Lee Kovel. ©2022 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.
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