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February 2025 – Volume Thirty-One, Number Two
Celebrating our 31th 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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Xiye Bastida, 22, will join the Arctic Edge Expedition in March. | |
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ARCTIC EDGE TEAM PLANS RESEARCH ON SPITSBERGEN ISLAND
Next month, the nine-person Arctic Edge Expedition to the Sassen-Bünsow Land National Park on Spitsbergen Island in the Svalbard archipelago of Norway, will study positioning techniques and technologies, cosmic radiation measurements, and the impact of space-based telecommunications on remote communities.
The Explorers Club flag expedition is part of an initiative of Horizons of Change, dedicated to sustainable human activity in remote and extreme environments, striving to reduce its ecological footprint. The organization plans a similar project to the South Pole in 2026 involving climate experiments and cutting-edge technologies.
According to its flag application to The Explorers Club, Arctic Edge will examine current polar exploration practices, test innovative concepts, and support researchers in gathering groundbreaking data. Additionally, the program seeks to inspire people of all ages to embrace and explore sustainable approaches.
The team will include the young Indigenous climate activist, Xiye Bastida, 22, whose voice is expected to bring a powerful perspective to the project. Bastida, who has been a passionate advocate for environmental justice, will not only share her personal journey as a climate activist but also shine a light on the polar regions – critical ecosystems that are already experiencing the intense impacts of climate change.
To date, main sponsors of the $175,000 project are Baffin, Ark Terra, Magen Entertainment, and the Or-Hof Law Firm.
For more information:
www.HorizonsofChange.org
www.xiyebeara.com
EXPEDITION NOTES
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Awardee Alison Criscitiello, ice core scientist and high-altitude mountaineer | |
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Explorers Club Selects EC50 Class of 2025
Building on its mission to engage with and support extraordinary explorers from around the world, The Explorers Club last month announced the 2025 class of The Explorers Club 50 (EC50): Fifty People Changing the World that the World Needs to Know About.
This year's EC50 honorees include a young indigenous leader regenerating rainforests and securing food sovereignty for his community; an ice-core scientist, high-altitude mountaineer studying the history of the climate and sea ice while working to increase diversity in STEM fields; a pangolin conservationist enhancing wildlife crime prevention strategies and improving the wellbeing of local communities; and an environmental journalist investigating untold stories on biodiversity within the protected areas of Brazil.
Also honored: an ocean scientist rebuilding degraded coral reefs around the world using cutting-edge 3D printing technology; a planetary scientist using remote sensing techniques to understand planetary evolution and the potential habitability of other planets, among many others.
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Awardee Chrissy Tracey, Forager & Vegan Chef | |
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The EC50 annually recognizes 50 extraordinary people who are doing remarkable work to promote science and exploration. The program was established to reflect the diversity of individuals on the cutting edge of exploration around the world and to help amplify the voices of these changemakers.
"The Explorers Club continues to expand the definition of an explorer, moving beyond the archetypal adventurer to include those who interpret the world through art, music, and culinary expression, and this is nowhere more evident than in our groundbreaking EC50 program," said Richard Wiese, President-elect of The Explorers Club, and EC50 co-chair (see related story).
Now in its fifth year, the collective EC50 community has expanded to more than 250 visionary explorers, representing over 55 countries, including Ecuador, Kenya, Peru, Portugal, Ghana, Indonesia, Haiti, the Philippines, Nigeria, and more, according to Wiese.
As members of the 2025 class, EC50 honorees receive complimentary Explorers Club membership for five years, access to the world's preeminent network of explorers, features in a special edition EC50 print publication and dedicated EC50 website, global lecture opportunities, and more.
The program is supported by Rolex as part of its Perpetual Planet Initiative.
For more information on the Explorers Club 50 and to view the full list of honorees: 50.explorers.org/community
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In-coming Explorers Club president Richard Wiese (l)
meets with a member if the Qatari royal family.
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Richard Wiese Re-elected President of The Explorers Club
Richard Wiese, 65, was elected the 46th president of The Explorers Club at its January Board of Directors meeting held in San Diego and will begin a one-year term in April 2025. The announcement was made last month by Richard Garriott, the Club’s current president.
Wiese, a renowned explorer and science communicator, was the Executive Producer and Host of the multiple Emmy Award-winning ABC and PBS program, Born to Explore. He became the youngest Club president in the organization’s history when first elected in 2002. During his tenure, he developed and negotiated multi-year partnerships with Rolex, Eddie Bauer, and later, Discovery Networks.
He also co-chaired the Global Exploration Summit (GLEX) in partnership with the nation of Portugal and is the founder of The Explorers Club 50.
During a breakfast with EN near his Connecticut home, Wiese said, “One goal moving forward is to create a truly international organization that mirrors the vast tapestry of exploration – one where every thread, every fabric has a platform to explain their own story and the world around them.”
Wiese (rhymes with “peace”) will assume the presidency during the 121st Explorers Club annual meeting on April 27 in New York.
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Roy Chapman Society Award goes to American paleoanthropologist Dr. John Hawks | |
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Roy Chapman Andrews Society Announces 2025 Distinguished Explorer Award
The Roy Chapman Andrews Society presented Dr. John Hawks, American paleoanthropologist and chair of the Department of Anthropology and Vilas-Borghesi Distinguished Achievement Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as the 2025 Distinguished Explorer Award recipient.
Hawks is a world expert on human evolution and genetics. His research covers seven million years of human origins. His work in human genetics helped uncover the very rapid recent pace of genetic evolution with the rise of agriculture. He was one of the first to show how genes from ancient groups like the Neanderthals could make a difference in today’s people.
For the last decade, he has worked with scientists and explorers in South Africa to bring to light new hominin fossils. Among the best known have come from the Rising Star cave system, where the team discovered the new species, Homo naledi, in 2013. Hawks has done fieldwork in Africa, Asia and Europe, combining skeletal evidence from fossils with new information from genetics to uncover how humans evolved.
Learn more about The Roy Chapman Andrews Society:
www.roychapmanandrewssociety.org
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Members of the JPL family helping LA fire victims. | |
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JPL Team Launches GoFundMe for Pasadena Fire Victims
A team of scientists, engineers, and technologists working on NASA's flagship missions – JWST, Roman, and the future Habitable Worlds Observatory, among others – has created a GoFundMe to assist its Pasadena colleagues affected by the recent wildfires.
The funds raised will be distributed to team members and their families who have experienced material loss or significant displacement. The goal is to have an immediate impact for affected collaborators, with emphasis on their urgent needs for temporary housing, meals, and replacements of lost clothing or other essential items. Over $55,000 has been raised to date, above its $20,000 goal.
Donate here:
https://gofund.me/7c092c70
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“We were shut down by extremely high winds just 800 feet shy of the summit. There comes a time when the risk outweighs the benefit, and you’ve got to make a decision. The investment made to be there always comes to mind during those moments and you’re tempted to let that convince you to keep moving forward in spite of the risk. It’s OK to walk away. The journey is the most important part for me, and that’s always worth the cost.
“You can always regroup, reset, refresh and try again when conditions allow. The mountains are the boss. They decide. Not us.”
– Ed Viesturs, 65, American high-altitude mountaineer, corporate speaker, and author reflecting on his 2022 trip to climb Cotopaxi (19,347 ft. / 5,897 m) in Ecuador.
EXPEDITION MARKETING
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Black Diamond Partners with RMI for High Altitude Testing
Black Diamond Equipment, makers of climbing, skiing, and mountain sports apparel and gear, has partnered with the mountain guiding service Rainier Mountaineering Inc. (RMI) Expeditions, one of the largest guides services in the U.S. with over 70 guides leading expeditions on Rainier, Denali, Aconcagua, Everest, and other high peaks around the world.
This collaboration is designed to spark innovation, advance the state of mountaineering gear, provide intensive field testing, and drive product design improvements to meet the demands of high-altitude adventurers, according to a company statement.
Through this partnership, Black Diamond becomes the official equipment and apparel sponsor for RMI Expeditions. Black Diamond has integrated RMI guides into their product development and field-testing programs while outfitting them across key categories such as apparel, packs, ice axes, harnesses, helmets, and more.
Says Neil Fiske, president at Black Diamond Equipment, “There’s no better product testing lab: every imaginable weather situation, millions of vertical feet climbed, on users of varying sizes, skills, and needs. The product that comes out the other end is bomber through and through.”
One standout example of this partnership is the cooperative development of Black Diamond’s upcoming 6000-meter parka. Designed for extreme high-altitude conditions, the parka is undergoing rigorous testing with RMI guides to ensure it meets the needs of climbers tackling the harsh conditions present on peaks above 6000 meters.
For more information about Black Diamond and its partnership with RMI Expeditions: www.blackdiamondequipment.com; learn more about RMI Expeditions at www.rmiguides.com
EXPEDITION INK
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After the North Pole: A Story of Survival, Mythmaking and Melting Ice
By Erling Kagge
The Norwegian explorer, philosopher, and acclaimed writer Erling Kagge chronicles his historic 58-day journey to the North Pole on skis in this thought-provoking memoir and meditation about nature and our place within it.
“The numbers are uncertain, but in the twentieth century, it is estimated that around a thousand men tried to reach the North Pole and sail through the Northwest Passage and the Northeast Passage, and of those, 751 have died doing so,” he writes.
In 1990, Erling Kagge and his friend Børge Ousland became the first people “to ever reach the pole without dogs, without depots and without motorized aids,” skiing for 58 days from a drop off point on the ice edge of Canada’s northernmost island.
Erling describes his record-making journey, probing the physical challenges and psychological motivations for embarking on such an epic expedition, the history of the territory’s exploration, its place in legend and art, and the adventures he experienced during the trek. Kagge is credited with being the first person to complete the “Three Poles Challenge” – reaching the North Pole, the South Pole, and the summit of Mount Everest on foot.
He writes, “We are all born with the same instincts as a polar explorer. As soon as we leave our mother’s womb, we want more space, more room in which to move. We stretch our arms and legs out in all directions and scream for air.
“We have a desire to explore the world. As soon as we learn to walk, we walk through the living room and out of the house, then start to wonder what lies between us and the horizon, and soon enough what lies beyond that. We are on our way to discovering our own North Poles.”
Learn more:
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/after-the-north-pole-erling-kagge?variant=42656777502754
WEB WATCH
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Doorbell video captures sound of tiny meteorite hit. | |
Stop, Hey, What’s That Sound?
What does it sound like when a meteorite hits the earth? No one really knew until a Ring home security camera, yes that bane of porch pirates, captured the sound of a space rock hitting earth outside a home on Canada's Prince Edward Island.
In July 2024, a Ring device at the Charlottetown home of Joe Velaidum and Laura Kelly captured not just video of a meteorite falling, but the sound of it smacking into the pavement just outside their front door, according to Yahoo!News.com (Jan. 16).
It could be the first time anyone has ever recorded the sound of a meteorite fall, according to geologist Chris Herd of the University of Alberta, who studied the retrieved fragments,
"As the first and only meteorite from the province of PEI, the Charlottetown meteorite sure announced its arrival in a spectacular way," he says. "No other meteorite fall has been documented like this, complete with sound."
Read the story and hear the crash:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/potential-world-first-wild-doorbell-062750893.html
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Nailing it on the first and only take. | |
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Best Timed Shot in TV History
If this isn’t the best-timed TV shot ever, well, it should be. Science historian James Burke, now 88, of the BBC documentary series Connections nails it in season 1 episode 8 back in the late 1970s. In a 2019 BBC interview Burke explains he wrote 10-sec. of copy then relied on an off-screen cameraman watching the countdown clock to throw him the cue at t-minus 10 to begin talking. Later he was falsely accused of using back (rear) projection to pull it off.
Watch Burke’s explanation starting at 1:04:
https://www.facebook.com/1636642569892667/videos/606848163358025
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Step inside with your smartphone.
(Photo of plaque: Peter Domorak; Shackleton’s sextant photo by Craig Waxman)
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Access The Explorers Club HQ Virtually
The Explorers Club’s new digital and mobile guide is now available for download on the Bloomberg Connects app. You can plan your visit to HQ, easily access helpful insights on-site, and dive deeper into your favorite artifacts from your smartphone. The guide offers exclusive content, access, and multimedia perspectives from artists, explorers, and more.
Guide highlights include an in-depth look at the Famous Firsts, a full building tour, the storied history of the legendary headquarters, and a peek into its stored collections. Find information on over 500 works from its collection, including Tenzing Norgay’s honorary membership acceptance letter; the Club flag carried to the moon on Apollo 11; mammoth tusks; the sledge used by the Henson-Peary 1909 North Pole Expedition; Sir Ernest Shackleton’s sextant; and something called a radiolarian skeleton.
The free arts and culture app also includes hundreds of international museums, galleries, sculpture parks, gardens, and cultural spaces. Once you've downloaded the app from wherever you access apps, search The Explorers Club and start exploring. Digital content will be added frequently.
For more information:
https://www.bloombergconnects.org/guides/
In a related story, see a video tour of the Club HQ created by Huckleberry, the online lifestyle retailer and media brand. Club executive director Will Roseman leads the video visit.
https://huckberry.com/journal/posts/an-exclusive-look-inside-the-explorers-club-members-only-clubhouse
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Editor’s Note
Thanks to a recent collaboration with the Utah State University Outdoor Recreation Archive, readers can now research past issues of Expedition News dating back to May 1995. Access it free at:
https://tinyurl.com/ENArchivesUSU
The Outdoor Recreation Archive documents the history of the people, products, and brands of the outdoor industry through unpublished documents, published materials and audio visual materials.
EN back issues will continue to be viewable at www.expeditionnews.com.
BUZZ WORDS
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BUZZ WORDS
Globers
People who believe the earth is round, which pretty much means all of us. In fact, “globers” recently added a few more believers. A group of popular flat earth YouTubers have admitted they were wrong after taking a trip to Antarctica to witness the 24-hour sun.
Colorado pastor Will Duffy organized the highly anticipated December 2024 trip, dubbed The Final Experiment,” which brought together four “flat earthers” and four “globe earthers” in an attempt to settle the debate once and for all. Flat earthers have long maintained that Antarctica holds the key to proving the earth is flat.
In the flat earth view of the world, Antarctica is an ice wall that encircles the other continents and holds in the oceans. If that view were correct, the sun must rise and set each day, even in Antarctica, and could never circle the sky all 24 hours.
“All right, guys, sometimes you are wrong in life,” admits Jeran Campanella from the YouTube channel Jeranism, during a sunlit midnight livestream from Union Glacier Camp, four-and-a-half hours south of Punta Arenas, Chile.
As they might have said of flat earthers in the film Airplane!, "Surely you can't be serious."
Learn more and watch the video here:
www.the-final-experiment.com
EXPEDITION MAILBAG
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Remembering a Visit by Rusty Schweickart
Dear Editor:
“Fun reading about the Erikson award for Rusty Schweickart! (See EN, January 2025). He visited the BEHEMOTH lab at Sun Microsystems in 1990... bringing with him the head of the Russian space program as well as a Cosmonaut. The three of them loved the bike (editor’s note: see www.microship.com), and we had a delightful visit chatting about adaptive system architecture in a field environment without the usual lab facilities.
“’Ha! Is like satellite!’ said the Russian space program guy, in response to my audio crosspoint switching system that can connect anything to anything, allowing complete reconfiguration or new applications under remote control.
“Rusty was delightful... really fun meeting him. We were introduced by John Gage, one of the Sun founders who I think carried the title ‘chief scientist.’ Good times.”
Steven Roberts, N4RVE
Harbor Digitizing
Friday Harbor, Washington
wordy@microship.com
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Steve Roberts today and back in 1991 when he was geeking
out on two wheels (vintage photo: Mel Lindstrom)
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Steve Roberts, 72, is a mobile computer genius we’ve called a “high tech de Tocqueville” in stories dating back to the 1990s. Last month he wrote in an email to EN, “… so often these days I'm using tech that would have been pure science fiction in my early days of paleogeekery… pocket supercomputer, software defined radio slurping in sigs from all over the world and displaying on a website, new publishing tools that let me transparently move edits from desk to bed.... it is all completely insane.”
Roberts called himself a lonely little nerd with gizmological gadgets, including a bike with a radio (unheard of at the time), and a 1974 homebrew computer.
Watch his self-made 6-1/2 min. video biography here:
https://nomadicresearchlabs.substack.com/p/prehistory-of-a-technomad
Think you’re cool exploring the world by bicycle with just an iPhone? Prepare to be awed. Learn more about his technomad two-wheeled travel:
https://microship.com/
ON THE HORIZON
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Be Like Lloyd, Key Largo, Florida, March 8-9, 2025
Dive fans now have a chance to try equipment like that used by perhaps the best-known Hollywood SCUBA diver to descend the depths. Were you inspired by Mike Nelson, the character played by actor Lloyd Bridges (1913-1998) in the hit TV series Sea Hunt (1958-1961)?
He famously used a double-hose regulator. Certified divers can use this vintage gear on March 8-9, 2025, at the History of Diving Museum’s Vintage Dive Weekend at Jules Undersea Lodge at the Key Largo Undersea Park in Florida.
Demonstrations with various hardhat diving helmets, including a Mark V and Miller-Dunn, will also be conducted, along with art activities and many photo ops. Dives with vintage gear are $50.
Learn more and reserve a spot:
https://tinyurl.com/BeLikeLloyd
EXPEDITION CLASSIFIEDS
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Read Exploration Quarterly
Exploration Quarterly is a new magazine for those who do not cease to be curious, to learn, and to explore. We print two beautiful 112-page issues per year and two all-online issues per year, with fascinating content such as Expeditions, Historic & Modern; Explorers of Note; Classic Kit; Cartographia; Victualling; Equipment Reviews; Skills Articles and Videos; Field Arts Tutorials (sketching, watercolor, map-making, and more), and much more.
Starts at $39 USD for an all-online subscription. View sample pages and subscriber details at http://www.exploringoverland.com/explorationquarterly
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Travel With Purpose, A Field Guide to Voluntourism (Rowman & Littlefield) by Jeff Blumenfeld – Travel has come roaring back and so has 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 | |
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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:
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. ©2025 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. Research past issues of Expedition News dating back to May 1995 courtesy of the Utah State University Outdoor Recreation Archive. Access is free at: https://tinyurl.com/ENArchivesUSU
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