November 2024 – Volume Thirty, Number Eleven 

Celebrating our 30th 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.

In January 2025, the Centennial Seppala Expedition team will dog sled the approximately 700-mile route from Nenana to Nome, Alaska. (Jason Frank photo)

DOG MUSHER AND POLAR ADVENTURER COMMEMORATE

ALASKAN SERUM RUN 100 YEARS LATER 

In two months, dog musher and Marine veteran Jonathan Hayes, based in Poland Spring, Maine, and polar adventurer Eric Larsen from Crested Butte, Colorado, will embark on the three-week Centennial Seppala Expedition following the original “Serum Run” route over 700 miles of Alaska’s most rugged terrain.

The expedition, from Nenana to Nome in the coldest and darkest weeks of interior sub arctic winter, will carry a symbolic cache of diphtheria medicine, reflecting the spirit and significance of the original mission. 

The project honors legendary Alaskan dog musher Leonhard “Sepp” Seppala (1877-1967) and his lead dog, Togo.

Diphtheria is a bacterial infection that can be fatal but is preventable and treatable with a vaccine. Almost 100 years ago, with a diphtheria epidemic threatening the entire population of Nome (1,400 in 1925), a group of 20 dog mushers and roughly 150 sled dogs relayed crucial antitoxin from Nenana across 674 miles of Alaska’s frozen icy interior to Nome, saving the community.

Seppala and his team of Siberian Huskies played a critical role in relaying the life-saving diphtheria serum. After this heroic act, Seppala and his dogs relocated to Poland Spring, Maine, where Hayes now resides and has been stewarding the legacy and story of the Seppala dog breed for the past 25 years.

Joining will be polar adventurer Eric Larsen known for his record setting polar and mountaineering expeditions. Larsen began his career as a dog musher; this will be his first major expedition since being diagnosed with stage 3B colorectal cancer nearly four years ago.

By bringing to life the 1925 Serum Run, the Seppala Centennial Expedition hopes to highlight both its historical significance and the ongoing relevance of this story today. A two-person support crew on snowmobiles will both film and provide logistical support.

Larsen emails EN, “These modern takes on 'historical' adventures are a great way to connect people with the stories and insights of the past - especially as the nature of exploration and adventure changes today.”

The Centennial Seppala Expedition is sponsored by Native Performance Dog Food with major support from the Continental Kennel Club, and Poland Spring Preservation Society. Product support is provided by Baffin, MSR, Therm-a-Rest, Nuts.com, Jack Wolfskin and Seirus Innovation.

Learn more: https://mushmaine.com

Too cute: see Seppala in the 1900s with his sled dog puppies, courtesy of the Alaska Film Archives of the University of Alaska Fairbanks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJLR0Gs0mw4

Team member L. Renee Blount is an adventure photographer, director, and mountain athlete who works to make the outdoors more inclusive.

ALL-BLACK TEAM GOES FULL CIRCLE IN

HONOR OF MATTHEW HENSON

In 2025, the all-Black Full Circle North Pole Team will honor the legacy of Matthew Henson, the first African American to reach the North Pole (1909), by sharing his story, raising awareness about climate change, and successfully crossing the last degree – 60 nautical miles, from 89 degrees North latitude to the North Pole at 90 degrees North.

The eight-person expedition will be led by Jeska Clark, an entrepreneur, explorer, and athlete. They plan to create awareness of the effects of climate change and share the diverse stories of the team’s members. The effort is supported by polar explorer Eric Larsen (see related story above).

The team consists of Jeska Clark (@clark_jeska), Erick Cedeño (@mr.erickcedeno), Marcus Shoffner (@marcusshoffner), L. Renee Blount (@urbanclimbr), Evan Green (@thevangreen), Thomas Moore (@thomasdmoore), Danica Carey (@seirus_gear), and Dom Mullins (@dommullinsllc).

Clark has participated in marine conservation efforts involving bamboo sharks in the Malaysian islands, polar expedition training in northern Canada, and summitted high-altitude peaks in North America, South America, and the Himalayas. She honed her leadership and lifesaving skills through Search and Rescue (SAR) training.   

On May 12, 2022, the Full Circle Everest expedition became the first all-Black team to summit Mount Everest.

Expedition partners include Hestra, Mammut, Osprey, REI, SCARPA, Smartwool, The North Face, YETI, and ZEAL.

For more information:

www.fullcircle-expeditions.com

Turn Expedition Videos into Cash

If you came back from your expedition or adventure with video that could potentially go viral, hit up Jukin Media. Say you have vid of penguins cavorting on an iceberg, cute sled dog puppies, or other animal antics, this video content service may pay you for it.

Based in Los Angeles, Jukin Media is looking for authentic videos and extraordinary performances they can license. They call themselves the world’s foremost provider of user-generated video content to advertisers, digital editorial publishers, social media and entertainment companies. Equipped with a library of more than 100,000 viral and trending videos, all are sourced by its in-house global search team.

Its videos have appeared in more than 4,000 commercials and 500-plus episodes of TV in categories ranging from Awesome, Fails and Nature, to Weather and Wildlife.

For recent examples view:

https://www.jukinmedia.com/licensing/thewire

They will tell you if your video is of interest. Submit it here:

https://www.jukinmedia.com/licensing/video-submissions

 Archive Your Expedition Records

Have boxes of files dating back to your first expedition? The Utah State University Outdoor Recreation Archive in Logan would like to know what you have, and potentially, may want to archive the materials. It documents the history of the people, products, and brands of the outdoor industry through unpublished documents, published materials and audio/visual materials, with an emphasis on corporate support. Then it strives to make those materials widely accessible to the public.

Correspondence with sponsors, financial records, patents, product sketches, technical documents, meeting minutes, annual reports, are of particular interest along with catalogs, magazines, newsletters, workbooks, marketing material, posters, and books.

The collection includes records from climber Jeff Lowe; the founders of Gerry clothing and gear; Moss Tent; and the early days of The North Face and Wilderness Experience.

They recently accessioned 40-year-old records from Du Pont, 3M, and Shaklee sponsorship of Will Steger polar expeditions.

If you'd like to donate materials to the Outdoor Recreation Archive, contact manuscript curator Clint Pumphrey at clint.pumphrey@usu.edu

Shatner Headlines Space2Sea Antarctic Cruise

The speakers on this cruise are to die for, but the pricing is a bit out of this world. Space2Sea departs Buenos Aires on December 19 for a 10-day luxury cruise to Antarctica featuring guest presenters William Shatner, Céline Cousteau, Charlie Duke, Scott Kelly, Neil deGrasse Tyson., and others. 

At press time, suites were still available ranging from $39,500 to $59,500. Sadly, the $91,500 suite was taken. Maybe next year.

The cruise is hosted by Future of Space whose goal is to, “bridge the divide, making our future beyond the Planet and into the Cosmos more approachable and integrated with every aspect of society.”

For more information:

https://space2sea.io

QUOTE OF THE MONTH

“Travel is about the gorgeous feeling of teetering in the unknown.”

– Anthony Bourdain (1956-2018), American celebrity chef, author, and travel documentarian.

This boot is proof of Sandy Irvine’s death during a 1924 Everest expedition. A name tag on the sock (upper left) carries the name “A.C. Irvine.”

(Jimmy Chin/National Geographic photo)  

EXPEDITION FOCUS 

Discovery of Sandy Irvine’s Foot is Clue to His Disappearance

By Tom Holzel

Litchfield, Connecticut 

Exclusive to Expedition News

Editor’s note: Andrew C. “Sandy” Irvine’s foot was discovered last September on Everest by a National Geographic team, which included Free Solo co-director Jimmy Chin. It was sticking out of the Central Rongbuk Glacier, below the North face, according to an Oct. 11 NatGeo story by Grayson Schaffer.

The sole was studded and bracketed with the diamond-patterned steel hobnails of a bygone era of climbing. The boot and sock clearly carried the name of the young pioneer climber. For insight into the discovery, EN turned to the mountain’s pre-eminent historian who has studied the disappearance of Mallory and Irvine since the mid-1970s.

“The Everest community, if not the world, was recently stunned by the discovery of Andrew Irvine’s boot – with his foot still inside. He and George Mallory disappeared in a surprise squall high on the slopes of the mountain on June 8, 1924. Whether either of them summited has been an enduring mystery ever since. “Sandy” Irvine was 22 at the time; Mallory was 37.

“Based on reports from the first Japanese expedition on the North side of the mountain since the British pre-WWII attempts, I launched a 30-man expedition in 1986 to see if we could recover that body. (We got snowed out.) 

“Mallory’s body was discovered by another American expedition (Conrad Anker) in 1999, essentially where I had predicted on the North face. Mallory's body was exceptionally well-preserved, bleached by the intense sun and essentially mummified from exposure to the elements. He too was identified by a name tag reading ‘G. Mallory,’ and other items found on his body.

“Irvine’s body has not been discovered, but three separate, vague sightings of a body seen off-route in the 8000m area sparked my curiosity to search for him using high-resolution aerial photographs. Eventually I selected a spot which fell within the sightings and made sense.

But Jake Norton and others searched the approximate area without luck; Mark Synnott went to the exact GPS location, and it turned up empty. It’s believed that the Chinese, jealous that their first ascent of Everest from the North might be topped, removed the body, after several likely sightings by off-route descending climbers.

“The only way a foot could be ripped off a body is in a long, forceful fall. According to my analysis, Irvine only fell 13 meters, landing on his back. Thus, one can surmise that the Chinese pitched Irvine’s body down the slope to the base of the mountain; during the fall his foot was likely ripped off.

“I believe Irvine’s body lies buried deep at the head of the Main Rongbuk Glacier where he ended up when dumped off the mountain by the Chinese. 

“The Kodak camera he was thought to be carrying, if ever found, I believe will hold no images. It would have been in his front jacket pocket. As he lay on his back for some 70 years, it would have been directly exposed to intense cosmic radiation and the film ruined.

“Rumors that the camera was recovered, the film unsuccessfully developed by the Chinese, seem awfully slim.

“What’s next? There is no need to conduct a DNA test, the proof is positive – except to feed the ‘Mallory made it’ cottage industry that will not die,” Holzel tells EN.

 Tom Holzel, 84, is an historian based in Litchfield, Connecticut, who has studied the Mallory-Irvine mystery for 50 years. He is the author of five books – two about Everest expeditions – along with dozens of articles.

When he and Reinhold Messner met at the AAC Christmas dinner in 2015, they discussed the disappearance of Mallory and Irvine extensively. At the end of the conversation, Holzel was asked, “So did they make it?”

“Impossible,” he answered. Messner gave the Everest historian a broad smile in agreement, and they shook on it.

Read the NatGeo story here:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/article/sandy-irvine-body-found-everest

Rock hard evidence: last year’s photo (left) versus the most recent HD image. 

MEDIA MATTERS

Search for Amelia: “It Was Just a Rock”

Earlier this year, an adventurer announced he believed he had found Amelia Earhart’s long-lost aircraft. Turns out what he found was a rock, according to the story in the Wall Street Journal (Nov. 5) by Nidhi Subbaraman.

“I’m super disappointed out here, but you know, I guess that’s life,” said Tony Romeo, a pilot, former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer and commercial real-estate investor from Charleston, S.C., who led the search and was speaking to The Wall Street Journal from a boat on the Pacific Ocean. 

Romeo’s hunt for Earhart’s famed aircraft came up empty in early November when he said he and his crew recorded high-resolution photographs and sonar images of the object they previously thought might be her iconic Lockheed 10-E Electra. The new images, Romeo said, revealed that the object was an “unfortunate rock formation” in the shape of a plane on the Pacific Ocean seafloor. 

Last year, Romeo – as the new chief executive of Deep Sea Vision, a company that does ocean floor surveys – joined the long line of adventurers combing the deep Pacific for traces of the aviator. Using $9 million of equipment, including a tangerine-colored underwater drone equipped with sonar, Romeo said he and his team searched about 5,200 square miles of ocean floor. 

Apparently, sometimes a rock is just a rock.

Read more:

https://www.wsj.com/science/environment/an-adventurer-thought-he-found-amelia-earharts-plane-now-he-says-it-was-rock-466309d2?st=kiV65P&reflink=article_email_share

The high-resolution images of the Endurance revealed a lone boot that likely belonged to Shackleton's second-in-command, Frank Wild.

(Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust/National Geographic)

NatGeo’s Endurance Premieres in London

Last month, Endurance, a film celebrating the historic discovery of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s lost ship by the Endurance 2022 expedition, premiered at the British Film Institute’s London Film Festival. It mixes film footage from the 1915 expedition with a 2022 search mission to tell how disaster befell Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–1917.

It was directed by Academy Award–winning husband-and-wife directors Jimmy Chin (see related story) and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi.

As part of the documentary, a new 3D scan of the ship was released to lift the veil of darkness from the wreck lying 3,000m beneath the surface. The digital scan, made up of 25,000 high resolution images captured when the ship was found in 2022, reveals unseen details of the ship’s final resting place.

Viewers can see the plates that the crew used for daily meals; a single boot that might have belonged to Frank Wild, Shackleton’s second-in-command (yes, another explorer’s boot was in the news last month); and perhaps most extraordinary, a flare gun that’s referenced in the journals the crew kept. The flare gun was fired by Frank Hurley, the expedition’s photographer, as the ship was lost to the ice.

Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust/National Geographic

“Hurley gets this flare gun, and he fires the flare gun into the air with a massive detonator as a tribute to the ship,” explains polar geographer Dr. John Shears, the search expedition’s director of operations. 

“And then in the diary, he talks about putting it down on the deck. And there we are. We come back over 100 years later, and there’s that flare gun, incredible,” Shears tells BBC News.

Marine archaeologist Mensun Bound, director of exploration, who has spent 10 years searching for Endurance, said, “This was the great age of exploration. We hadn’t then descended to the deepest depths of the ocean. We hadn’t climbed the highest mountain in the world. Getting to the moon was a distant dream. The idea of exploration, going for the prize and then taking one step beyond, is in all of us.”

The documentary began streaming on Hulu and Disney+ this month.

See the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=563_lBO3wiY

EXPEDITION FUNDING

Applications Now Open for AAC Fall Grants

The Fall 2024 American Alpine Club grants cycle is now open—including the Cutting Edge Grant, The McNeill-Nott Grant, the Jones Backcountry Grant, the Mountaineering Fellowship Fund Award, and the Zack Martin Breaking Barriers Grant.

The AAC has a storied legacy of funding climbing of all levels and research projects supporting its mission—often significantly contributing to pivotal experiences in the careers of recipients. Through the years, AAC grants have encouraged thousands of climbers to dream big and push their limits, supported the work of volunteer Search and Rescue teams, and funded humanitarian projects.  

This fall, more than $43,000 will be awarded to AAC members across the country. (Not a member, join up – it’s a great cause). Deadline is December 31, 2024.

Apply here:

https://americanalpineclub.org/grants

Peary-Henson commemorative stamp issued in 1986. Sadly,

you need more than three of these to mail a letter today.

PolarExplorers Offers Matthew Henson Scholarship

PolarExplorers has opened the application period for the 2025-2026 Matthew Henson Scholarship. It honors the legacy of polar explorer Matthew Henson (1866-1955) by inspiring people of color – particularly emerging outdoor guides or people with current positions or future goals of leadership in the outdoor industry – to embrace cold weather adventures, and to build the necessary skill set to thrive (and not just survive) during cold weather expedition travel.

This two-year scholarship, awarded annually, provides two consecutive years of fully subsidized participation on PolarExplorers' Polar Shakedown Training. The first year focuses on skill development and an overview of cold weather expedition travel. The second-year dives into leadership development and hands-on experience guiding in the extreme cold.

Applications are due by December 1, 2024. The scholarship recipient will be notified by December 15, 2024. The dates for the 2025 training are February 1-6, 2025. 

For more information:

https://www.polarexplorers.com/matthew-henson-scholarship 

ON THE HORIZON

World Extreme Medicine Conference, Nov. 16-18, 2024, Edinburgh

The not-for-profit World Extreme Medicine Conference in Edinburgh on November 16-18 is the world’s largest extreme medicine gathering bringing together astronauts, explorers, war surgeons, special operation medics and humanitarian nurses. It will be held at Dynamic Earth, Edinburgh’s world-class science center and planetarium.

The event helps first responders and other medical professionals master essential new skills in areas including expedition dentistry, wilderness first aid, and SAM splinting (a lightweight, flexible splint made of aluminum and foam that's used to immobilize soft tissue and bone injuries). Tickets £ 395 - £545.

Learn more:

operations@extreme-medicine.com, https://worldextrememedicine.com/world-extreme-medicine-conference/

Watch the sizzle reel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9-f0wRTZP0

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:

http://www.amazon.com/Get-Sponsored-Explorers-Adventurers-Travelers-ebook/dp/B00H12FLH2

Advertise in Expedition News – For more information:

blumassoc@aol.com

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. ©2024 Blumenfeld and Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN: 1526-8977. Subscriptions: US$36/yr. available by email only. Credit card payments are accepted through www.paypal.com to blumassoc@aol.com