Did you know that “thrawn” is the ability to make the most of whatever you’ve got?
Did you know that Beira, the Queen of Winter, is the mother of all Scottish gods and goddesses?
You’ve had to pause for reflection twice within the first 10 seconds of the film if, like me, you didn’t.
Don’t expect that effect to go away. Lesley McKenna and Lauren MacCallum may not be the Queens of Winter — but they’re pro snowboarders and they've got a lot to say. Contemplative narration dovetails here with an ardent style of riding that's hard to find on piste.
Would you ride that? Yeah, me neither — but then again, I don’t have thrawn.
Stubborn energy
“Stubborn is definitely part of it,” MacCallum says. “A transformative energy, a powerful energy, aye — very needed in these times. The struggle — the thrawness.”
This Patagonia joint is all about the athletes’ deep-rooted backgrounds and contagious personalities. You don’t have to watch much of it to get a strong infusion of both qualities — but you should, because they’re both colorful and compelling.
As much as Thrawn is the story of two athletes, it’s also the story of their town. Aviemore, Scotland is situated in Cairngorms National Park, and it’s a focal point of the country’s ski scene. McKenna knows it well — it’s where her father worked as the first professional ski patroller in the United Kingdom.
Don’t miss wipeouts, sketch moments, and highlights from the Olympian’s long career in the bindings. And hang on for a statement about the future of snow sports in Scotland. MacCallum delivers a snarling, steadfast, aspirational message on the climate change reshaping the country’s famous highlands.
Noting statistics on snowfall decline, she says, “I’m sick and tired of complaining about it in the pub, basically. It brings a sense of unease. We’re gonna have to roll up our sleeves and do it for our goddamn selves.”
Whether or not you lace your boots and cinch your bindings with thrawn each day, you’ve probably felt its call. Watch this short docu to get a booster shot of the mojo that makes these Scottish snowhounds tick.
American ultrarunner Camille Herron has set another world record.
This time, Herron ran 560.33 miles (901.8km) to set a new women’s six-day world record at the 2024 lululemon FURTHER event in La Quinta, California.
The event ran March 6-12 to coincide with International Women’s Day on March 8. New Zealand’s Sandra Barwick set the previous record of 549.063 miles in Australia in 1990, a record that’s stood for 34 years.
Herron broke that record by more than 11 miles and also achieved at least 12 interim world records and milestones along the way. Her effort comes out to an average pace of at least 15:22 per mile over the entire six days. This includes hours of stopped time, which Herron used for sleeping, resting, eating, drinking, and more.
The race was held on a 2.55-mile loop made up of largely dirt. Herron ran 220 laps.
Here are the records, world bests, and other milestones that Herron hit en route. This was Herron’s approximate record progression through the six days:
- 48-hour USATF American road record – 247.7 miles (Her IAU world record and USATF American track record still stand at 270.5 miles from her 2023 effort at the time-based event.)
- 300 miles – 59:54:58 (hours:minutes:seconds)
- 500 kilometers – 62:50:45
- 3 days – 342 miles
- 600 kilometers – 81:23:38
- 400 miles – 88:34:26
- 4 days – 429.8 miles
- 700 kilometers – 98:33:59
- 800 kilometers – 117:44:55
- 500 miles – 118:19:17
- 5 days – 501.7 miles
- 900 kilometers – 142:40:58
- 6-day IAU world best performance benchmark – at least 560 miles
This story was first published on iRunFar.
Kilian Jornet’s reputation precedes him. You don’t need me to tell you about the career of the most accomplished ultrarunner ever.
But he’s racked up some mileage by now. In 2023, he took 84 days off due to injury.
Think your stats measure up to the GOAT? Here’s what Jornet did this year — according to his trusty training spreadsheet.
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Canadian philanthropist and real estate investor Kim Bruneau had already found fertility through diving. Now, she wanted a world record.
So she plunged into the deep end. Bruneau first discovered her abilities in freediving during a recent trip to Mexico. According to the Toronto Sun, she found during a training exercise that she could dive 27 meters on one breath.
Bruneau then partnered up with an underwater photographer and voila — a beautiful shoot at a record depth.
Bruneau dove 40 meters in Nassau, Bahamas with photographer Pia Oyarzun on Dec. 5. She planted herself on a sand knoll amid a school of sharks and handed over her mask and breathing apparatus to Oyarzun. Then, wearing a dramatic red dress, she posed for the camera. A diver just out of the picture regularly returned to let Bruneau take a breath or two.
“The memories it created, it’s awesome,” she said. “I’ve done modeling for a couple of years but these are epic. This is the kind of portfolio I want to have.”
Bruneau and Oyarzun combed the deeps to another set or two, including a sunken ship, before surfacing.
Hidden weights kept her down
The multi-talented model wore concealed gear totaling around 6 kilos to stay down while posing. And she observed strict breathing routines involving nitrox and emergency regulators to avoid decompression illness, the Toronto Sun reported.
Amazingly, it was diving that also first made Bruneau a biological mother. She had years-long fertility struggles. IVF treatments and other techniques were unhelpful, and the condition only subsided when she first started diving.
Bruneau’s first daughter is adopted, and her second daughter Ella Rose is in her first year of life.
“I stopped all the things I thought would help (get me pregnant) and I just did things that made me happy,” Bruneau said.
She broke the previous record by around 10 meters.
Here is Bruneau's Instagram post describing the spectacular shoot.
Daniel Winn sits at his modest kitchen table, waiting on word from his agent while playing chess against himself.
“It’s a very exciting time,” he says. “[My agent] might actually, at this very moment, be calling brands…seeing who’s kinda interested and who’s not so interested.”
A collegiate distance runner whose career was once described as “moderately exceptional” by a local publication, he is now chasing the dream of going pro. Or as narrator Jeff Merrill puts it, “pursuing the five-figure contract of his dreams.”
Winn reflects. “I don’t have a very good understanding of my value,” he says.
Welcome to LIMITS — the story of a young track and field athlete resigned to the trenchant career limbo only fringe sports can promise.
Prepare for sardonic overload. Minutes into the film, I actually felt compelled to Google Winn to make sure he was real; the interviews are perfect.
If the producers could have seen me do it, they would have cackled with vindication. There are films about athletes where grit and determination are a brave protagonist’s only weapons against an uncaring world. This is not one of them.
Winn finishes a workout he complains and fawns his way through. Turns out it’s his lucky day: buy two, get one free on post-workout beverages at the corner store. And they’re hiring, “so if this running thing doesn’t work out for me,” Winn winks into the camera, “I know where to go.”
LIMITS is adept at using the macro narrative of the struggling young athlete as its main implement. But it really twists the knife with the subtleties.
The morning after a frustrating race, he gets his toaster down from a shabby shelf above his oven to make frozen waffles. He’s telling us how his friends keep insisting that his career woes are due to “bad timing.”
The camera frame just so happens to capture a magnetic knife holder with a single cheap steak knife on it. He laments that there are only two waffles left.
“I don’t know, it’s just tough,” he purses his lips.
As Winn spirals away from what he calls his “life goal,” many professionals among his cohort (interviewing as themselves) flourish. But most of them appear to have no clue why or how they’re doing it. Their obliviousness renders Winn’s situation even more pathetic.
“I definitely had no idea, career-wise, what I was going to do after school,” Sinclaire Johnson says, “so I’m kinda glad the pro running thing worked out because it’s buying me some time to figure out what I’m going to do with the rest of my life.”
LIMITS holds delights far too profound to make spelling out the conceit worthwhile. Don’t miss when Winn compares himself to the brilliant but tragic writer Sylvia Plath.
And if you’re offended by attacks on delusions of grandeur, don’t press play.
In 2022, Eleanor "Elsey" Davis gained notoriety on the international trail racing scene, racking up wins and becoming a North Face athlete.
And now, just six days into the new year, she's already made a new running record.
On Jan. 6, Davis broke the women's winter Bob Graham record, completing the classic trail in 20 hours and 21 minutes. That beats the previous women's record by nearly an hour and a half, which was established in Dec. 2018 by Sabrina Verjee. She completed the trail in 21 hours and 49 minutes.
For the uninitiated, the Bob Graham Round has a well-deserved reputation as a grueling, difficult trail. This Lake District fell running challenge (also known as hill running) traverses 42 fells over 106km, with 8,230m of elevation gain.
The challenge is named after Bob Graham, the runner who first completed the route in under 24 hours back in 1932.
Just a few weeks ago, two other runners each broke the solo, unsupported winter Bob Graham Round record — within 24 hours of each other.
She’s away! Elsey setting off at 22.00 on her Winter BG in good spirits. Bit wet & windy atm but should clear away later. Go well Els. pic.twitter.com/jCjVSlZxdV
— Duncan Richards (@duncsjr) January 5, 2023
Davis earns place in the spotlight
Elsey Davis could fill a trophy shelf with the trail races she won last year.
In July, she finished first among women at the Eiger Ultra Trail in Switzerland. In August, she won the Scafell Marathon and ran for Britain at the World Mountain and Trail Running Championships.
Still going strong, she took home a win from Ring of Steall in September. Then Davis got an invite to the Golden Trail World Series for the first time, where she finished third after three days of racing in the Azores.
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As if all that wasn't enough, she managed to finish eighth in the UTMB OCC, and joined Britain's team for the World Mountain and Trail Running Championships in the fall.
"This phenomenal year of running happened in parallel to Elsey’s demanding work life as a trainee GP, and comes off the back of her spending much of 2020 working on the COVID wards," the UK's Trail Running Mag wrote.
In 2020, Davis had planned to run in the London Marathon. She ended up treating COVID patients instead, the UK's Runner's World reported.
Two fell runners moving in opposite directions each broke the solo, unsupported winter Bob Graham Round record within 24 hours of each other, according to UK Hillwalking.
The outlet reported Paul Wilson set a time of 22 hours, 54 minutes on Thursday, Dec. 15. Shortly after that, on Friday, Dec. 16, James Gibson set a new record of 21 hours, 12 minutes.
"What a day! The conditions were perfect for winter running with lots of hard frosted ground. I didn't have a schedule; I just went with the flow and enjoyed it," Gibson told UK Hillwalking. "I ran strongly and passed Paul [Wilson] on Yewbarrow, stopping for a selfie before both pushing on in our opposite directions."
"Temperatures fell to about -10˚C, and my bottles froze in the night. With all the high becks frozen over too, it made getting water pretty hard. My legs tired over the last section, but I was happy to keep going and get back to Keswick in the time I did," he went on.
For the purposes of the record, "winter" refers to any time between Dec. 1 and the last day of February, UK Hillwalking reports.
Shane Ohly, the founder of Ourea Events, set the previous solo unsupported winter record at 23 hours, 26 minutes on Dec. 2020.
A famously grueling route
The Bob Graham Round is a Lake District fell running challenge which traverses 42 fells over 106km, with 8,230m of elevation gain thrown in for good measure. The challenge is named after Bob Graham, the runner who completed the route in under 24 hours back in 1932.
According to Fastest Known Time (FKT), runners traditionally tackle the Bob Graham Round supported and with the assistance of pacers. A solo, unsupported winter attempt is another beast entirely. Only four runners have completed it: Martin Stone, Shane Ohly, and now Paul Wilson and James Gibson.
FKT lists the current supported male Bob Graham Round record holder as Jack Kuenzle with a time of 12 hours, 23 minutes and the supported female record holder as Beth Pascall at 14 hours, 34 minutes.
Here's a short film about the Bob Graham Round Saloman put out a few years ago.
By anyone's standards, 222kph is speedy. If the only thing propelling you is the wind, it's unheard of — until now.
That's because pilot Glenn Ashby and Emirates Team New Zealand stoked their land yacht Horonuku up to 222.4kph on a lake bed in South Australia. The still-unofficial feat effectively broke the previous wind-powered land speed record of 202.9kph (set by Richard Jenkins in 2009).
The Horonuku's crew hit the milestone on Dec. 11 at Lake Gairdner. It took advantage of seasonal 22-knot South Australian winds to push the land yacht to unheard-of speeds. Conditions were gusty, making piloting difficult.
“The team and I are obviously buzzing to have sailed Horonuku at a speed faster than anyone has ever before — powered only by the wind," pilot Glenn Ashby told the New Zealand Herald. "But in saying that, we know Horonuku has a lot more speed in it when we get more wind and better conditions."
"So for sure, there is a cause for a celebration, but this isn’t the end," Ashby continued.
The Auckland-based Māori tribe hapū Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei named the Horonuku. In their language, it means "gliding swiftly across the land." But was the craft swift enough? Months of weather delays, rainfall, and surface water at the chosen location hampered the team's efforts.
Awaiting certification
Despite those setbacks, the Horonuku's internal GPS data indicates it broke the record. But official verification is up to land yachting's governing body: the Federation Internationale de Sand et Land Yat (FISLY).
According to the Herald, Emirates Team New Zealand has 48 hours after completing the attempt to submit its data to FISLY for verification. In the meantime, the team is happy to be pushing the science needed for wind-powered land speed records toward new horizons.
"The land speed project has been a new opportunity to push the boundaries in aerodynamics, structural forces, construction methods, and materials fields,” Emirates Team New Zealand Principal Matteo de Nora told the paper.
“What is often underestimated is that the technologies we explore in challenges like this or in an America’s Cup campaign — are ultimately the foundation of tomorrow’s technology. Being ahead of the times in technology is what fascinates [us] about all the challenges faced by the team so far.”
If you don't have a silly grin on your face after flinging yourself downhill through some powder with a pair of boards strapped to your feet, you aren't doing it right.
At least, that's the argument that the short film NEOTENY makes. The title refers to the retaining of juvenile features into adulthood. Not a great thing in most circumstances, but when applied metaphorically to the idea of just getting out there and having some fun in the wintry woods — well, what's not to like?
Enter professional freeskiers Kim and JJ Vinet. Their short film explores the concept of play in three brief but jam-packed minutes of Canadian skiing.
"Like finding something that you thought was lost," the narrator intones in the opening seconds of the film as the camera glides over the snow-dusted trees of Revelstoke, British Columbia. "A longing not felt since you were a child."
And there's certainly childlike joy on display as the Vinets barrel over drops, slide through drifts, and glide gracefully around trees. The smiles are big enough to see even around the snow gear.
JJ Vinet and Danny Leblanc produced the film with Blizzard/Tecnica, so there's the occasional obligatory product closeup. But it's not egregious, and for the most part, NEOTENY is wall-to-wall backcountry goodness.
"Get out there and play," the narrator concludes as the film wraps with a final shot of Kim and JJ grinning like they just had the time of their lives.
We couldn't agree more.
Just a few decades ago, many certified scuba divers still wrote their dive tables with pen and paper. The handwritten algorithms tracked depth and time, ensuring these underwater explorers knew how to dive — and surface — safely.
The advent of dive computers in the late 1980s made that math unnecessary, and soon a majority of the world's divers had the "unattractive, chunky, grey housing" strapped to their wrists, Dive Magazine wrote.
Now, divers can get all that functionality from the Apple Watch Ultra.
On Nov. 28, Apple released the Oceanic+ app, and claims that it turns the tech company's powerful watch into a "fully capable, easy-to-use dive computer," the news release said.
Apple collaborated with Huish Outdoors to design the app for its new watch, which dropped this year. The Apple Watch Ultra already comes with depth gauge and water temperature sensors, and remains water-resistant down to 40 metres.
By pairing it with the Oceanic+ app, users get advanced features, like dive planning and a comprehensive post-dive experience.
“There’s now a companion that communicates clear and timely information to divers,” Andrea Silvestri, Huish Outdoors’ vice president of product development and design, said in the news release.
Silvestri, who led the creation of the Oceanic+ app, said "there’s never been anything like this in scuba diving before now.”
Oceanic+ App design and features
After lengthy testing, Silvestri said that the Apple Watch Ultra feels as intuitive as a dive computer. It makes it easier to focus on the experience instead of complicated button clicks or mental math.
Apple Watch Ultra is certified to WR100 and EN 13319, an internationally recognized standard for dive accessories, including depth gauges, the company said. Apple also specified that its display stays bright and visible in the water.
Wearers can customize the watch's Action button to launch the Oceanic+ app into the pre-dive screen. During a dive, pressing the Action button will mark a compass bearing. In the app's dive planner, users can set surface time, depth, and gas. Then the app calculates their No Deco (no-decompression) time — a metric used to determine a time limit for a diver at a certain depth.
A laundry list of functions continues from there. According to Apple, the dive planner presents dive conditions, like tides and water temperature. It also gives up-to-date information from external sources, including visibility and currents. Once finished diving, users can check out a collection of data about their experience, from a map with GPS entry and exit locations to other graphs about depth and temperature changes.
Silvestri pointed to the app's haptic feedback, which uses vibration to "tap" users on the wrist to deliver notifications.
'We’ve made the experience very personal," he said. "It’s like a gentle nudge to guide you.”
Oceanic+ App: pricing and availability
Interesting in trying out the app? It's available for download on the App Store.
However, you'll first need an $800 Apple Watch Ultra, if you don't have one already. It also needs to run on watchOS 9.1 paired with certain iPhones (no older than iPhone 8, for example).
Basic app functions, like depth and time, come free. But for the serious ones — decompression tracking, tissue loading, the location planner, and an unlimited logbook capacity — you'll need to pay a subscription.
That will cost you $10 USD per month, or annually for $80 per year.
If you've just been watching cats playing piano on YouTube, then you're missing out on a whole world of fun.
Robert Maddox, aka Rocketman, started his own channel four years ago, where the aging daredevil shows off his jet-powered inventions. From skateboards to go-karts to coffin cars, this mad scientist/speed demon will seemingly put flaming propulsion behind anything.
In his latest vid, Maddox decides to take his grandmother's 1960s lawn chair, strap a high-powered rocket to the back, and blow down the highway like he's running from a fleet of cops.
"It's a blast!" Maddox says. "You don't have to make super expensive things to have a lot of fun."
No doubt, Rocketman, no doubt.
Runtime: 6 minutes
The UTMB Mont-Blanc organization has announced that a participant in the PTL (Petite Trotte à Léon), one of the UTMB Mont-Blanc events, has died as a result of a fall.
This article was originally published on iRunFar.
The 2022 PTL, a 290-kilometre event with 26,500 m of ascent where entrants participate in teams of two or three, began at 8 a.m. CEST on Monday, Aug. 22, in Chamonix, France.
We sadly report that a Brazilian runner died in a fall last night during the 290-kilometer #PTL, part of the #UTMB Mont-Blanc event. https://t.co/Lf7WOEtZn7
— iRunFar (@iRunFar) August 23, 2022
The organization states that it learned of a severe accident at 1:30 a.m. CEST on August 23, during the first night of the nearly weeklong event. It occurred on an established trail between Col de Tricot and the Refuge de Plan Glacier, high above the French town of Les Contamines on the southwest side of the Mont Blanc massif.
According to this year's PTL course map on Livetrail, the live-tracking application, this was somewhere between kilometres 36 and 40 of the course. The Col de Tricot is at 2,114m above sea level and Refuge de Plan Glacier is at 2,711m above sea level. The race organization confirms that there was good weather at the location at the time of the incident.
A rescue helicopter responded to the scene, and confirmed the death of a Brazilian national. To respect the individual's family and friends, the organization will not release the victim's name.
According to the race organization, this year’s PTL saw 105 teams start. At this time the PTL continues, and each team is being given the opportunity to continue participating or not.
One year ago, a Czech runner died in a fall during the 2021 TDS race at the UTMB Mont-Blanc festival, leading to the cancellation of the race for most runners. (Those who passed ahead of the accident, roughly the top 20% of the field, were allowed to continue.)
Given the world's easy access to all human knowledge, it's often tempting to feel like everything has been discovered. Yet an objective way of measuring waves has remained elusive. A new drone company claims to have found a solution.
Given the ever-increasing number of claims from surfers about record-breaking waves, the need for a proper measuring tool becomes apparent. For example, it took over a year for Guinness World Records to confirm that Sebastian Steudtner surfed a 26m wave in Nazaré in October 2020.
Called Henet Wave, the startup has announced a drone-based method for obtaining "objective" measurements of waves in real-time.
A recently released YouTube video shows the company's first demonstration of their drone technology in collaboration with surfing pro Andrew Cotton.
This new technology, if successful, could modernize surfing competitions.
"Henet was conceived late one night in 2020 in an office overlooking the Soup Bowl in Barbados," according to the company's website. The Soup Bowl is a popular surfing spot on the island's rugged east coast.
"An article debated the XXL female wave of the year entry...[whether] the surfer needed to complete the ride in order to win the award. To us, the bigger debate should have been the ability to differentiate between a 73-foot wave and a 69-foot wave using subjective methods. Henet was born."
But a recent flight over the Weisshorn shows the siren appeal of this deadly game.
”The first time I flew, it was being alive,” wrote William Wharton in his acclaimed debut novel Birdy in 1978. "Nothing was pressing under me. I was living in the fullness of air; air all around me, no holding place to break the air spaces. It's worth everything to be alone in the air, alive."
Recently, the group Soul Flyers published a video, in which two of the best wingsuit flyers in the world, Fred Fugen and Vincent Cotte, flew over the 4,506m Weisshorn in the Alps.
The video caused a stir, thanks to the beauty of the flight over this peak. The incredible footage calls to mind William Wharton's quote above. The Weisshorn is one of the highest 4,000'ers in the Pennine Alps, north of Matterhorn and northwest of Zermatt. In particular, you can see how close the flyer was gliding to the sides of the canyon at the bottom of the mountain.
It is not the first time that the Soul Flyers have shared their love of this type of flying. On other occasions, they whizzed past the tops of the Egyptian pyramids and glided down the Eiger.
The most dangerous sport in the world
Wingsuiters typically jump either from an aircraft or from a cliff. They resemble a bat or flying squirrel, with membranes between the arms, body, and legs. They also, of course, have a parachute. During the descent under the canopy, the pilot unzips the arm wings to be able to pull the toggles that control the parachute's direction.
Wingsuiting is an advanced skill that takes many hours of experience to do it relatively safely. But even for the experts, anything unforeseen or a minor miscalculation is frequently fatal.
How this crazy, exhilarating sport began
Austrian-French tailor Franz Reichelt was an inventor and parachuting pioneer. He was the first to carry out a wingsuit jump, wearing a combination of a parachute and wings. Reichelt had asked for a special permit to jump from the Eiffel Tower in Paris. On a cold February 4, 1912, at 7 am, the 33-year-old Reichelt launched himself from the first platform of the tower. His parachute failed to deploy, and Reichelt died immediately when he crashed to the ground.
The dangers
One of the most frequent accidents occurs when the wingsuit flyer hits the tail of the aircraft during launch. This happens very frequently. Also, when several flyers are in the air in close proximity, it is important not to interfere with the airflow of the others. This can cause turbulence and a high-speed crash.
When the wingsuit flyer jumps from a cliff, the first seconds are critical to gain stability and pick up speed for greater control. At any time, the wind can abruptly change direction, or the jumpers may miscalculate how close they have swooped to the side of a mountain. This all happens in a thousandth of a second.
Even BASE jumping is unavoidably dangerous. The list of deaths grows every month. There are many accidents every year, and practically all of them are fatal.
Since 1981, more than 400 people have died, many of them during wingsuit flights. The death rate for wingsuiting is an astonishing 1 death per 500 jumps. The most recent tragedy occurred just days ago in the Julian Alps. Bad weather has grounded rescuers for the time being, though it is not a rescue but a body retrieval.
The famous free solo climber and BASE jumper Dean Potter and his partner Graham Hunt died in 2015 during an illegal wingsuit jump in Yosemite. The pair crashed after launching from Taft Point at an altitude of 2,300m. In 2011, Potter achieved what was then the longest flight for wingsuit BASE jumping (7.5 km). He was also the first to BASE jump with a dog, his Australian cattle dog named Whisper.
The unforgettable Valery Rozov combined BASE jumping and wingsuiting with mountaineering. He had more than 10,000 jumps in his career, many of them spectacular. He flew from an active volcano in Kamchatka, from Mount Ulvetanna in Antarctica, from 6,275m Huarascan, from Cho Oyu from 7,700m, and from the North Face of Everest at 7,220m.
In 2004, Rozov and his climbing partners opened a new route on the west face of 5,800m Amin Brakk in the Karakorum. Rozov then BASE jumped from the top.
He died in November 2017 jumping in a wingsuit from Ama Dablam. After a bad launch, he fatally hit a ledge.
A trip up any of New Hampshire's modest 1,220m "high" peaks amounts to a hop, skip, and a jump for most visitors. For one avid hiker in the state, the figure of speech takes on the primary form of ascent.
Just ask Moose, a female mini rex rabbit who lives in New Hampshire with her human, Chelsea Eason.
Eason and Moose are hiking partners. Together, the two explore trails and hunt summits.
The 7th-smallest U.S. state, New Hampshire features 48 "Four Thousand Footers," including the northeast region's highest point: Mount Washington, 1,917m.
By contrast, Moose stands about 25cm tall on her hind legs. Scaled to the height of an average human (around 170cm), climbing Mount Washington would be the equivalent of a 13,000m climb for Moose.
Eason told New Hampshire Public Radio that, as you might think, hikes with Moose tend toward the slow side. However, the casual pace affords her some special benefits.
"She'll hop around, sit and eat, and take care of herself," Eason said. "But those are the moments when I get to sit, take a breath, and figure out what she's looking at and what she's enjoying."
And Moose is far from incapable –- she keeps up on trickier trail sections, scrambling over rock slides and hopping gaps in the trail. The rabbit's full-send attitude, Eason said, helps propel her forward.
"She's kind of been my ride or die, my adventure partner," said Eason. "She's really kind of been the inspiration for me to keep going."
At the end of the day, the rabbit looks like an ideal trail partner. She doesn't appear to complain much, always brings a jacket, and seems to take care of her own nutritional needs. Plus, she's sociable and popular.
Eason said, "it's been nice" to run into other hikers, many of whom show Moose some love on the trail and on social media. The hiker bunny's Instagram following is modest, but she's becoming a bonafide TikTok star, approaching 1 million likes from about 31,500 followers.
@moosiegoosegallery @tessaviolet 's trend, but sassy hiker addition. What do you think?#yesididthat #nh48 ♬ YES MOM BY TESSA VIOLET - Tessa Violet
“TikTok was an accident,” Eason said. "I just made one or two videos, and people started really gravitating toward that."
Moose and Eason have developed their hiking technique through three years of "patience and practice." In September 2021, they completed the entire "Four Thousand Footer" circuit.
Neither shows any sign of losing the spring in her step.
A quartet of geophysicists and hydrobiologists has obtained a permit to dive beyond the 30-metre mark of Lake Cheko in Siberia. Their research, slated to begin in late February, will focus on the cataclysmic Tunguska event. It will be the deepest expedition ever conducted at the site.
Using lakebed samples, the team aims to answer a century-old question posed by the leader of the first Tunguska research expedition, mineralogist Leonid Kulik. His question was this: If a meteorite caused the explosion, where is the epicenter of its crater and the extraterrestrial matter from it?
The Tunguska event and conflicting research
In July 1908, a meteoroid measuring 50-60 metres in diameter plunged through the atmosphere above the Siberian taiga, catalyzing the 12-megaton Tunguska explosion. Experts estimate that the blast decimated some 80 million trees and dispatched at least three human beings. It is Earth's largest impact event on record, but scientists have yet to locate its crater.
Some believe the blast was caused by a mid-air explosion. Others think it was caused by hard impact. In 2012, an Italian research team found evidence that pointed to a small 500m crater in Lake Cheko as the point of impact. The study was hotly contested because that crater is located some eight kilometres from the Tunguska event's supposed epicenter.
The Italian group collected seismic measurements of the crater's bottom, which showed about 100 years' worth of accumulated sediment. And Lake Cheko's bed — which is shaped like a crater — was deeper than is typical for the region. Dense stony substrate beneath the sediment was likely the remains of the exploded meteoroid, they concluded.
In 2017, a Russian team contested those findings. Core samples drawn by the Russians seemed to indicate that the lake bed was nearly 200 years older than the Tunguska event. Geologically young, but not young enough to be the epicenter.
Tunguska research expedition, 2022
Lake Cheko bottoms out at 54m and resides in the Tungussky Nature Reserve, a rural stretch in central Siberia's Krasnoyarsk region. This winter expedition will start a cycle of long-term research there.
"The team of researchers aim to study how thick the lake bottom’s sediments are, and take primary samples," reserve inspector Evgenia Karnoukhova told The Siberian Times. "The data they’ll gather will be analyzed and passed on to geologists. We are not speaking about the search for any celestial body at this stage."
Emmeline Freda Du Faur defied convention by pioneering women's climbing in New Zealand. But her sexuality and tragic suicide long overshadowed her achievements. Eventually, the first woman to climb Aoraki/Mount Cook had a memorial stone placed upon her previously unmarked grave.
Early life
Born in 1882 in Sydney, Australia, Du Faur’s childhood involved long days exploring Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. Near her family home, the sprawling 150 sq km park was a welcome release for the highly strung Du Faur to explore pursuits atypical of women at the time. Instead of completing her nursing studies, she taught herself to rock climb. Rather than play with girls her age, she roamed with her dog.
For her summer holidays, Du Faur traveled to New Zealand with her family. During one holiday, she saw photographs of Aoraki/Mount Cook, New Zealand's highest peak. These photos inspired Du Faur.
In 1906, she took her first trip to the Hermitage Hotel. Nestled within Mount Cook National Park, at the foot of the Mueller Glacier, the Hermitage Hotel dates back to 1884. When Du Faur arrived, the snowy mountains captivated her. From the hotel windows, she gazed out at Aoraki/Mount Cook and determined to reach the summit.
Alpine climbing
On another trip to the Hermitage Hotel in 1908, Du Faur was introduced to Peter Graham. Graham, a pioneering guide in the area, had conducted expeditions up Fox Glacier and made 13 ascents of Aoraki/Mount Cook. He was perfectly positioned to introduce Du Faur to alpine climbing.
More than just a keen student, Du Faur was determined, strong, and capable. First, Graham tested her ability with a 10-hour traverse of Mount Wakefield and Mount Kinsey, at the southern end of the range. He quickly recognized Du Faur's competence. Building on her rock-climbing experience, he added ropework and snow and ice climbing to their sessions.
Beneath her bravado, Du Faur struggled with her sexuality in an uncompromising society. Homosexuality was illegal in the early 1900s, and society saw lesbianism as a psychological disorder. Climbing gave Du Faur an escape.
In 1909, with Graham guiding, Du Faur achieved her first significant ascent, 2,627m Mount Sealy. Despite the pair’s climbing competence, social customs dictated that an unmarried woman should not camp alone overnight with a male guide. They were forced to invite a chaperone to join them.
Two days later, Du Faur ascended The Nun’s Veil (2,736m). Within a week, she completed the first female ascent of the west ridge of Mount Malte Brun, crossing the famous Cheval ridge to the summit with Graham and another client.
Fighting convention
It wasn’t just sleeping arrangements that Du Faur had to worry about. The public also scrutinized her attire. Du Faur dressed in a skirt to just below the knee, knickerbockers, and long puttee leg-wraps to cover her ankles. She wore this on all her climbs, despite sunburn, discomfort, and the safety hazards that came with climbing in a cumbersome skirt.
In climbing, Du Faur had found her calling. After her successful first season, she returned to Sydney and embarked on three months of training at the Dupain Institute of Physical Education. This was important for two reasons. Muriel Cadogan trained her and became her romantic partner, and her training prepared her for a return to New Zealand, setting up her pioneering Aoraki/Mount Cook ascent.
In late 1910, Du Faur sailed back to New Zealand from Sydney and enlisted Graham once again. They had previously attempted Aoraki/Mount Cook via Earle's Route but a bergschrund defeated them. This time, Du Faur was certain that her extra training would ensure a successful summit.
They warmed up with climbs of Mount Annette and Mount Mabel. Then they knocked off a virgin 2,438m peak near Barron’s Saddle, at the head of the Mueller Glacier. Next, with the extra support of Graham’s brother Alec, they set off for Earle's Route on Aoraki/Mount Cook.
Aoraki/Mount Cook
This time, not only did they reach the summit, but theirs was only the second ascent of the west ridge. They completed the climb in record time, just six hours. Du Faur was now both the first woman to reach the summit and the first Australian.
In sharing her tent with her male guides this time, Du Faur also broke with needless tradition. “I was the first unmarried woman…to climb in New Zealand, and in consequence, I received all the hard knocks, until one day when I awoke more or less famous in the mountaineering world, after which I could and did do exactly as seemed to me best,” wrote Du Faur afterward.
Unstoppable, that same season she climbed Mount De la Beche (2,979m) and Mount Green (2,828m). Then, she became the first person to climb Mount Chudleigh (2,944m).
In the next two seasons, Du Faur scaled the virgin peak now named Mount Du Faur (2,389m) and made the first ascents of Mount Nazomi (2,953m), Mount Dampier (3,420m), Mount Pibrac (2,567m), and Mount Cadogan (2,398m). She also made second ascents of Mount Tasman (3,497m) and Mount Lendenfeld (3,192m).
But her most notable climb was a grand traverse with Peter Graham and David Thomson. The trio traversed all three peaks of Aoraki/Mount Cook in 1913. The traverse is now regarded as one of the classic climbs of New Zealand's Southern Alps.
Her final season
This would be Du Faur’s final climbing season. Cadogan (who had been a respected feminist in Sydney) had unwittingly cast their relationship into the spotlight. In 1914, the couple relocated to England. They intended to climb mountains in the European Alps, Canada, and the Himalaya.
In 1915, Du Faur published The Conquest of Mount Cook. It has proven vital for preserving her legacy.
World War I prevented the couple from ever achieving their climbing plans abroad. Over the next few years, their relatively contented life began to unwind. The government sent them to mental institutions and forcibly split the couple up because of their sexuality. In 1929, Cadogan committed suicide.
Du Faur returned to Sydney. But without Cadogan, she fell into depression. In 1935, she fatally poisoned herself with carbon monoxide.
An unmarked grave
Shunned by society, regardless of her contribution to mountaineering, Du Faur was not given a formal burial. Instead, she was buried in an unmarked grave.
Her private life with Cadogan rendered her seemingly forgotten until Sally Irwin released a biography in 2000: Between Heaven and Earth: The Life of Mountaineer Freda du Faur: 1882–1935.
New Zealand farmer Ashley Gaulter read a copy of Irwin's book and decided to put right Du Faur's final resting place.
“I read that she was over here in Manly Cemetery, and at the time, I was living quite close by, and I thought, well, I’ll go and find her,” Gaulter said.
“I couldn't find her in the first instant, and then found a map and tracked her down. I found this poor little patch of grass surrounded by other tombstones and there she lay in an unmarked grave. And that seemed like an injustice,” he said.
Gaulter enlisted the help of a local stonemason to make a gravestone. Finally, Du Faur has a marked gravesite in Manly Cemetery, Australia.
Hans Henrik was an unusual polar explorer. He went on five dramatic arctic expeditions and saved the lives of many of polar explorers, but he was always homesick.
Henrik was a family guy who loved his kids and wife so much that he refused to go on expeditions without them. So they accompanied him. His youngest son, Charlie Polaris, was born on board Charles Francis Hall's ship, the Polaris, just before it ran aground. The newborn baby then participated in a 2,900km, six-month drift on a disintegrating ice floe.
Geese were the messengers
Two months ago in our present era, in Qeqertarsuaq on Disko Island, we were following a flock of Canada geese for no apparent reason. The geese were not supposed to be here at this time of the year. By mid-September, they should have all been en route to Canada. But this summer was eternal, and here they were, devouring the late blueberries and getting fatter. Instead of flying away, they were leading us somewhere.
They took us to the local cemetery, to some old graves. There were no berries here. They walked across old stones and suddenly took off. Making a circle above our heads, they then vanished, leaving us alone at the old grave.
That was a sign. Geese were the messengers, as they say in Greenland. The geese brought us to Suersaq, a.k.a. Hans Henrik, the great Inuit polar explorer.
Two islands have been named after Hans Henrik, and a stamp in Greenland honors his memory. But his posters do not adorn the walls of aspiring polar explorers, and his Inughuit name, Suersaq, is known only to aficionados.
Some say that Suersaq did not take Arctic expeditions seriously, that he saw the efforts to map the Arctic as a substitution for a big polar bear hunt. Indeed, Suersaq had no ambitions to be “the first” in the race to the North Pole. Like Ootaah and other Inuit explorers, he did not join these extreme expeditions with endurance records in mind. It was life as usual, though his employers called it "an expedition".
But it was his practical skills, endless adaptability, and unbreakable spirit that helped save qualified Europeans and Americans. They came to the Arctic with a mission but instead went into survival mode when Sila, the weather, had a final say.
A life of freedom
Suersaq never thought of himself as a pioneer or a hero. He did not attribute what he did daily to courage or endurance. Instead, he was vulnerable and emotional, he felt threatened among foreigners, but he was who he was.
He deserted the first expedition he took part in because that life got too boring. Instead, he fled with his fellow Inughuit to live an unstructured life. The Inughuit were free, while the expeditioners were not.
During his flight, he hunted polar bears and found a girl, Mequ, the love of his life. That was much more fun than establishing some official and -- from his point of view -- irrelevant record, like reaching the 82nd parallel by dogsled. Besides, he knew that his Inughuit buddies had trod this ground previously on many hunts and none of them saw it as a special accomplishment.
First Inuit man to write a book of exploration
Yet Suersaq was an educated man. He wrote a book about his arctic adventures, the first Inuk to have done so. Originally composed in 1877, it has often been reprinted. Memoirs of Hans Hendrik, The Arctic Traveler gives details of the Kane, Hayes, Hall, and Nares expeditions, as well as an account of August Sonntag's death. Suersaq wrote it in Kalaalissut, the Greenland language, and Hinrich Rink, the colonial director for Greenland, translated it into Danish and English and published it.
Born in the southern settlement of Fiskenæsset (today Qeqetarsuatsiaat), some 100km south of Godthåb (today Nuuk), as Hans Hendrik, Suersaq was raised in the Moravian faith and attended a Moravian school, where he learned to write and read.
His first expedition
At age 18, Suersaq was already an excellent subsistence hunter and great kayaker. Not surprisingly, the American explorer Elisha Kent Kane recruited him. Kane was commander of the Second Grinnell Expedition, bound for the island’s northern end to search for John Franklin's lost expedition.
Examining the fate of past American misadventures in Northwest Greenland, Kane knew that the only way to survive in these latitudes was to live Inuit-style. He was looking for someone who could be a perfect Inuit: a dogsled driver, a kayaker, a hunter, and an interpreter.
Kane says of Suersaq: "I obtained an Eskimo hunter at Fiskernaes, one Hans Christian (known elsewhere as Hans Hendrik), a boy of eighteen, an expert with the kayak and javelin. After Hans had given me a touch of his quality by spearing a bird on the wing, I engaged him."
Suersaq accepted the offer since he had to help his elderly parents.
After a rapid start, the expedition got stuck near Cape Alexander, in the Thule District, for two long winters. It was in the winter of 1854 when Suersaq became famous and a much-desired guide among American explorers. When four men disappeared on the ice, he found their sled track and brought a rescue party to the frozen men. When expedition members started to starve and developed scurvy, he was able to get food. Once again, he had saved the party.
Free spirit
Suersaq was skillful but he was a free spirit. The expedition routine was too boring for him. He was also frightened by the white men, whom he thought were going to harm him. Something might have been lost in translation, but this is how he felt according to his book. So when he met the local Inughuit of far northern Greenland (a different culture than the more southerly one he came from), he fell in love with their lifestyle. They were truly independent. The Americans were not. So he left with the Inughuit.
It was a brave move. At that time, the West Greenlanders saw these northern denizens as dangerous outcasts. There were superstitions, but Suersaq managed to overcome them. Yet as a devoted Christian, he worried for the Inughuits' souls.
A time of gifts
Suersaq received two very important gifts during his escapade. First was the beautiful Mequ, who became his wife and had four children with him. The second was his name, Suersaq. According to Nuka Muller, one of the most prominent Eskimologists of our time, Suersaq is an Inughuit name that means “the saved" or "the healed one”. It was bestowed only by Inughuit angaqqoks (shamans), which for us means this: Hans Henrik had to work hard to deserve it.
Despite his desertion, Kane so highly valued Suersaq that he named an island north of Etah after him.
When a member of Kane’s expedition, Isaac Israel Hayes, started a new expedition toward the North Pole in 1860, he invited Suersaq to join him. Suersaq agreed under one condition: He would not leave without his wife and son. This was not an easy decision for Hayes, but he agreed to let them join the expedition.
Suersaq provided food and shelter for Hayes and his men, while Mequ fished, cooked, sewed, and kept the seal-oil lamp burning. She turned out to be a valuable addition to the expedition too, and the couple’s fame increased.
Hayes' expedition failed to reach the North Pole. It also lost a man, the second in the command, a German astronomer August Sonntag. Sonntag fell through the ice during a sledge journey with Hans. Though Suersaq saved Sonntag from the freezing water, almost dying himself, he could not save his life. Sonntag died during the night from hypothermia. Suersaq was on the verge of death too, but he managed to reach the Etah Inughuit and find refuge.
The arrival of the Polaris
After the departure of Hayes, Suersaq spent 10 years in Upernavik working for the Royal Greenland Trade Company. Then one day, another ship with a mission to discover the North Pole arrived. This time it was Charlie Francis Hall, the leader of USS Polaris, who asked Suersaq to join his expedition. Suersaq had the same answer as before: He would not travel without Mequ and the kids. This time, there were three of them. Hall accepted.
The Polaris managed to go further than any ship before her, but then, in the northern part of Nares Strait, Hall suddenly fell ill. He died in Thank God Harbor two weeks later, apparently from poisoning. Shortly before his death, Hall named another island after Suersaq. This time it was Turtupaluk, which means a “kidney” because it looks like a kidney, a rocky island in Nares Strait. Hall named it Hans Island.
A barren, steep-sided, one-kilometre-wide bit of land, Hans Island has become modestly famous in recent years, because both Canada and Denmark claim ownership of it.
Six months on an ice floe
After losing their leader, the Polaris eventually turned south. One night in October, she became trapped in the ice in Smith Sound. Fearful that the pack ice would crush her, the crew prepared to abandon ship. Fourteen people stayed on the Polaris, but 19 off-loaded supplies and found refuge on an ice floe. Thus started a six-month drift, one of the most dramatic survival stories in the history of arctic exploration.
Suersaq, Mequ, their children, and two other Inuit from Canada, Ipirvik and Taquilittuq, also with a baby, took care of the American, German, Danish, and Swedish explorers. They built three igloos, and Hans was able to hunt seals. The Inuit families cooked on the seal-oil lamp, to save fuel. The Europeans did not like the smell and used one of their two remaining boats as fuel instead. The clash of cultures was obvious.
When the dogs got into the storage and ate much of the provisions, the Europeans shot five dogs on the spot. They looked on in disgust when the Inuit made a feast from the killed dogs, not wanting to waste the meat. Little did they know that in about two months they would be happy with the dog meat. By then, the crew would have to live off boiled dried seal skins, which were almost impossible to chew. If they were lucky, they'd get some seal entrails and frozen blubber.
In March, after reaching Nares Strait, the ice floe started to disintegrate. Suersaq was helping people to switch between the boat, which was too small to hold everyone (remember, the second boat was burnt), and the small ice floes. He did this 24/7 until the last day of April when the castaways spotted a ship.
They fired guns, jumped, and shouted. But it was all in vain, they were too far away to be noticed. Suersaq jumped into his skin kayak and rushed to the sealing ship. Once again, he was a savior.
Thirty years of adventure
Two years passed and another expedition, this time the British Arctic Expedition led by commander George Nares, recruited Suersaq. Again, Suersaq agreed.
This time, he left his family behind. It was a mistake. He felt lonely, missed his family, did not trust foreigners, and was soon thinking of escape. He was relieved when he finally returned home.
In 1883, 30 years after he joined his first arctic Expedition, a Swedish expedition to Cape York recruited Suersaq for one last season. He joined only for the summer. He knew that his time in the adventure world was over.
Suersaq died in 1889 at the age of 57 and was buried in the cemetery above Qeqertarsuaq.
Gone but not forgotten
We found some of his old photos and the first edition of his book in the Museum of Qeqertarsuaq, but we made our best discovery in the community house. We gathered there for an evening concert. The leader of the Inuit theatre troupe from Nuuk was our friend, a young talented actor and designer born in Qeqertarsuaq. His name is Hans Henrik Suersaq Poulsen. He is Suersaq’s direct descendant.
Suersaq Junior performed a play about his great-grandfather. This is what he says: “We have heard so much of the qallunaat (white) explorers like Knud Rasmussen and Robert Peary, and so little about the Greenlanders who ensured that these expeditions were a success. We wanted to tell their part of the story. And naturally, Suersaq was to be a part of the show because he was the first Greenlander to be a part of a big expedition.”
While Suersaq Sr. explored the High Arctic, Suersaq Jr. explored a place between tradition and modernity.
The lesson of Suersaq
In recent months, my partner Ole Jorgen Hammeken and I were asked to teach young Inuit children some survival skills. We gave practical classes to children in Qeqeratarsuaq and Ilulissat. We decided to base our classes on Suersaq’s drift.
At first, we started our drift on one oversized sheet. At the start, it could fit a tent and 20 people. As the game progressed, we folded the sheet, making it smaller and smaller. Finally, it was able to fit only four people. The greatest surprise was that the children found ways to continue the drift, very similar to Suersaq’s methods.
Those born in the Arctic are prepared for abrupt change. It is your everyday life, life as usual. It is really easy to brainstorm with the Inuit children who literally live on the ice. And now, their real-world knowledge is backed up with academic knowledge. These children, many of whom are young dogsledders, young scientists, and artists as well, will lead the world in future arctic exploration.
Baintha Brakk I (7,285m), better known as Ogre I, has been attempted over 20 times. Only three expeditions have summited. ExplorersWeb dives into the history of this imposing granite tower.
The Karakoram presents some of the toughest mountaineering challenges on earth. Angular mountains, gigantic towers, dizzying ridges, unknown faces in remote places. It has always attracted the best climbers. Today, more than the 8,000'ers, it is the Karakoram's 7,000m and 6,000m peaks that are the future of mountaineering. Here, exploration continues to play the most important role.
Panmah Muztagh is a sub-mountain range in the heart of the Karakoram. In the Baltistan district of Pakistan, it is made of four groups of mountains -- the Ogre group, the Latok group, the Choktoi group, and the Chiring group.
The Ogre
Baintha Brakk I (7,285m) is better known as Ogre I. Besides its main summit, it has two secondary peaks. Its west and east summits are both 7,150m. Like a violin standing upright, this steep granite tower, with a prominence of more than 1,800m, requires serious commitment.
Over 20 expeditions have tried to climb it, but only three have managed to reach the summit.
The commitment begins at its often storm-battered Base Camp. From there, whichever route climbers choose hides danger. The weather is harsh and unpredictable, and the peak itself grants no respite. Once embarked on the ascent, the climber has to endure lack of oxygen, the endless lengths of its pillars, the challenging faces, the hanging seracs, and always, the ferocious winds.
The normal routes on 8,000m peaks have higher mortality rates, but then, far fewer people attempt the Ogre. There are no high-altitude tourists, you don't pose for photos, you can't get a helicopter directly to Camp 2, and there's no one waiting for you with hot tea at the camps.
The first ascent
After three previous attempts, the main summit of the Ogre was climbed for the first time on July 13, 1977. British climbers Doug Scott and Chris Bonington ascended via the southwest spur to the west ridge, and over the west summit to the main summit. They made a quick push, 15 straight hours of climbing from their final camp. The last section of the climb was a tower with a 100m vertical face.
After reaching the summit, disaster struck. At 7,200m, at the start of the first rappel, Scott fell. The rope held, but Scott hit the rockface hard. He lost his goggles and ice ax and broke both legs. Bonington climbed down to him, and they spent the night in a bivouac on a ledge.
”It was a long night waiting for the first light of dawn, which was ages coming,” Scott recalled in his book, The Ogre. "There was no wind, no sound at all, just a penetrating cold kept at bay by involuntary shivering and creating friction heat by rubbing arms and legs."
It was a slow and technical descent, hanging from ropes and crawling in sections. Scott dragged his broken legs inch by inch down the Orge. Their companions, who were in Camp 2, gave them up for dead and began to descend.
A storm forced Scott and Bonington to shelter for two days in a snow cave. Bonington contracted pneumonia, so he too was very weak. Things got worse when Bonington fell on his side and broke two ribs. Despite everything, they continued to descend, helping each other with all their might.
Finally, they met their two companions, Mo Anthoine and Clive Rowland. Together, they were able to reach Base Camp after a week. There, they had to wait a long time for rescue. Somehow, everyone got out alive.
The second ascent
On July 21, 2001, Urs Stocker, Iwan Wolf, and Thomas Huber reached the summit via the south pillar. Bad weather forced them to take refuge in a crevasse at 5,000m. At first, they had a dispute with an American team that was on the same route and had to wait for them to withdraw.
They built Camp 1 at 5,000m and then slept in two porta-ledges fixed in the middle of the pillar, at 5,900m and 6,200m. The team made a final camp at 6,500m at the foot of the traverse to the main summit, which was 800m of mixed terrain. From there, they began their summit push on July 21.
The wind was very strong, but they were able to top out. The group also made the first ascent of the Ogre III.
The third ascent
Hayden Kennedy, Kyle Dempster, and Josh Wharton started up the southeast ridge, then moved up the southeast face, and finally a section of the south face.
The team had to struggle through a rubble traverse and climb on mixed terrain. They bivouacked at 6,900m. Wharton got sick, but Kennedy and Dempster continued to the main summit. On August 21, 2012, they topped out. The descent was very difficult because Wharton was still unwell.
In the same season, Kennedy and Dempster made the first ascent of the east face of K7 (6,934m).
"I think alpine climbing comes down to 40 percent luck, 40 percent motivation, and 20 percent skill," Kennedy said after the expedition. "You have to be really motivated to do that. You just keep building and dealing with the bad rock and dealing with whatever."
For this climb, the young climbers received the Piolet D' Or.
Unfortunately, Dempster and Kennedy both died a few years later, Dempster on Ogre II in 2016, and Kennedy in 2017 in Montana. One day after his girlfriend died in an avalanche, Kennedy committed suicide. They were two unique talents.
Notable attempts
On June 15, 1983, French climbers Michel Fauquet and Vincent Fine completed 900m of the vertical south pillar without a fixed rope. They still had over 600m remaining to the summit, 400m of snow slopes, and more than 200m of rock. However, the weather turned and they had to wait in their bivouac tent.
On June 17, they tried to continue. They reached 7,100m before they decided to descend. They were very close, but the Ogre was not accommodating.
The south buttress
On August 5, 1993, a Swiss-German team led by Tom Dauer arrived at Base Camp. After two weeks of miserable weather, they fixed rope on the buttress up to 6,100m. They wanted to continue up the alpine-style route in two teams of three each. They made two attempts, but bad weather forced them to abort.
When the weather cleared on August 28, they tried again. The next day, Phillip Groebke fell while jumaring and died immediately. Nobody witnessed his fall to explain what went wrong. The group then retreated from the mountain.
The southwest face
In 2002, a Japanese team attempted the southwest face. Japanese climbers are famous for attempting new routes, and the Ogre has many potential new lines. But the southwest face is very dangerous because of a large number of seracs. The Japanese team almost made it but had to turn around 10 to 15 metres before the summit.
Some climbers might claim a summit, but the Japanese climbers were clear: They did not summit the Ogre, even if they only missed by a few metres. Their honesty is commendable.
The southeast buttress
On July 12, 1993, Americans Tom McMillan, Peter Cercelius, and Carlos Buhler made Base Camp at 4,450m. They intended to start their route from the head of the Choktoi Glacier. A group of Japanese climbers was already working on the route through the icefall, but the seracs changed day by day. The Americans did not want to enter the icefall and decided to flank it on ice slopes and rock walls.
The ascent to the col was steep, with 12 pitches of mixed ice and rock climbing. The Japanese, who had already roped off this dangerous stretch, offered to share the route and the ropes. They were about to withdraw after 20 days of trying. Only seven of those days had provided good weather. The Japanese fixed six pitches on ice. They also left one pitch equipped on the 600m granite buttress.
The U.S. group advanced, but the weather deteriorated and they had to return to Base Camp. McMillan got sick. On August 30, after several attempts, Buhler and Cercelius began their push up the buttress. But with only three or four pitches left, they saw that they could not continue alpine style and so withdrew.
The north face reconnaissance
Herve Barmasse and Daniele Bernasconi reached the foot of the north face of the Ogre at the beginning of July 2012. The north face is also dangerous, but Barmasse felt they had a chance. "There are weak points if you accept the constant exposure to avalanches and icefall," he said.
They started to acclimatize. After nine days at or above Base Camp, they wanted to start the climb. However, July 12 to July 28 yielded only two days of fine weather. Instead, they went to other peaks and returned to the Ogre on July 28. When they returned, they saw that even the vertical rock walls were covered in snow.
The north face of the Ogre remains one of the greatest unsolved challenges in the Karakoram.
The next time you hear the high-pitched whine of a drone cut the alpine silence, it may not be because an influencer is hunting down video content.
In Scotland, mountain rescue teams have implemented drones to make their jobs, and the mountains at large, safer. The machines can already help search for missing or injured people in remote, hard-to-access locations. Drone experts see their mountain utility expanding, thanks to the wide range of tools and technology they can carry.
ExplorersWeb has called drones "game changers" for mountain rescue. In those applications, they work fairly intuitively. Most elementarily, a drone pilot on the ground can help rescuers suss out the situation from below with the unit's onboard camera. Operators can also fit drones with various gadgets like lights, speakers, and even radio handsets.
Experts say the technology has helped rescue teams access terrain previously thought too dangerous for ingress. So far, Scotland's 28 volunteer search-and-rescue teams have all adopted the technology. Rescuers implemented drones on Ben Nevis, the southern uplands, Fife, and the Trossachs over the last year.
Drones in mountain rescue: how it works
John Stevenson leads a rescue team for Lochaber mountain rescue in Fort William, which covers Ben Nevis. The group currently employs four drones. Their most critical advantage is in scouting.
"The drones are definitely an asset; there's no doubt about it," Stevenson told The Guardian. "We're putting drones into places where years ago, we might have thought twice about putting people in."
The Lochaber unit has also found that drones can sweep terrain faster than humans can during searches for missing persons. Tom Nash, a former RAF Tornado navigator, founded the Search and Rescue Aerial Association of Scotland and has trained rescuers to pilot drones across the country. He explained further:
Risk reduction is a key use of a drone. Previously, where someone has needed to do a rope rescue or a stretcher lift, you would have some poor person dangling over the edge of a cliff, roped back, peering over saying 'I think we should put the rope down here.' Now, just put the drone 20 yards out the other side of the cliff and look back, [and] you can see where the casualty is. You can floodlight that at night. We can put a speaker on, and if we know it's going to be a while, we can speak to the casualty and say help is on the way, 'give us a thumbs up if you're OK but can't move.' That's a really critical use.
Nash looks for drones' roles on rescue crews to keep expanding as pilots' skills and available technology advance. In the future, he said they could potentially "drape" 4G mobile phone coverage over areas where phone masts are knocked out or don't exist. Eventually, drones could even deliver supplies and equipment to rescue sites.
"It's so exciting because it can and will revolutionize things," he said.
Kongur Tagh (7,719m) lies in the Kashgar Mountains, near the eastern edge of the Pamirs. It is in one of the most remote areas of China, within the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.
In 1981, a team of talented British climbers took it on alpine style. But Joe Tasker, Pete Boardman, Alan Rouse, and Chris Bonington weren't the only group on the mountain.
Little-known giants
Although not far from the ancient Silk Road, the Kashgar mountains remained largely unknown to Westerners until the late 19th century. Some colossal peaks in the area include Kokodag (7,210m), Kongur Jiubie (7,530m), Jungmanjar (7,229m), Karayalak (7,245m), and the almost 8,000m Kongur Tagh.
Early explorers
At the end of the 19th century, some western explorers first probed the area. In 1868, Englishman George Jonas Whitaker Hayward sketched a big peak onto the map to the south of Kashgar. Then in 1895, English explorer, geographer, and diplomat Ney Elias crossed the Karatash Pass from the Taklamakan desert. He was the first European to reach Karakol Lake, very close to Kongur Tagh.
Kongur Tagh was unknown in Europe until 1900 when Hungarian geographer Aurel Stein brought home the first good photographs of the range, taken from Karakol Lake.
New mountains opened for climbing
In the late 1970s, China opened eight mountains for climbing. Among them was Kongur Tagh, the highest peak in the Pamirs, and still unclimbed.
In 1980, Michael Ward, Chris Bonington, and Alan Rouse, along with some scientists, made a reconnaissance trip to Kongur Tagh. They did not have much information about it. The most recent information available was an article written by Sir Clarmont Skrine, Consul General in Kashgar between 1922 and 1924, almost 60 years earlier. The Chinese, who had climbed nearby Kongur Jiubie, could share very little about Kongur Tagh. It was always hidden behind the other peaks.
The Chinese explained that they had not climbed the mountain because it was too enigmatic, with ever-changing weather. On this first trip, Ward and his team explored the area and planned a route for the following year.
Friendly competition
While the British climbers began to organize their 1981 expedition, a Japanese group also wanted to climb Kongur Tagh, from the north side.
At the end of May 1981, the British climbers, some scientists, and a cameraman arrived. The four climbers were a magical quartet: Joe Tasker, Pete Boardman, Alan Rouse, and Chris Bonington. All remarkably talented mountaineers.
The Brits put up Base Camp near one of the glaciers, then established an Advanced Base Camp near Koksel Pass, situated on the Kongur-Muztag ridge to the south from Karayalak Peak.
The first summit push
On June 23, they began their first summit attempt from the south side of Karayalak Peak. Bonington planned to climb the southe ridge of Junction Peak (7,350m), traverse it, and then climb the pyramid that led to the summit of Kongur Tagh via a plateau.
However, four days later, they faced a major dilemma. The team ran out of fuel and was low on food. They weren't far from the summit, but Bonington felt they shouldn't risk it. The distance was tricky to estimate, and the terrain was totally unfamiliar.
There was a discussion. Alan Rouse and Joe Tasker did not want to enter the debate, although they considered Bonington to be right.
Boardman took the opposite view. He wanted to continue. This was partly because Boardman had more fuel left, while Bonington had used more than he should have.
A heated discussion followed, but eventually, the group decided to withdraw to Base Camp, and tempers died down.
The second push
Time was against them. The British longed for the summit of this huge hidden mountain, but the Japanese team was already in the area. The Japanese only had permission to reach the Kongur Tagh Base Camp beginning July 14, but they had already climbed Muztagh Ata to acclimatize. Now, they were on their way to the north side of Kongur Tagh.
Bonington's team knew that the weather was unpredictable and the final pyramid of the peak was very difficult. “The weather dominated everything we did," Bonington later recalled. "Kongur seemed to produce its own brand [of weather], the clouds sitting on it like a cap and enveloping the whole massif.
On July 4, the group left Base Camp again. They would try a new route via the southwest rib and Kongur Col. By July 7, they were at the foot of the western Kongur mountain range. Then bad weather swept in, and the four climbers had to hide in crevasses on the west ridge at 7,340m. In his book Kongur: China's Elusive Summit, Bonington called these crevasses "snow coffins."
The final pyramid was like the Eiger. They could barely advance because of fatigue, the terrain, and strong winds. Finally, on July 12, they reached the summit. After a difficult descent, they made it safely back to Base Camp.
Bad luck on the north ridge
The Japanese expedition was not so lucky. They separated into two groups, to attempt the north side from different Base Camps. One of the groups, a three-man team, chose to climb the north ridge alpine style.
On July 16, Yoji Teranishi, Mitsunori Shigi, and Shine Matsumi left Base Camp with food for nine days. They were last seen on July 23, at 6,500m. The weather deteriorated until August 3. When it finally improved, there was no sign of the climbers. Bonington suggests that after reaching the summit, they were probably swept away by an avalanche during the descent.
Kongur Tagh's first ascent was a major achievement and brought together some of the greatest climbing talents of the time. Sadly, Boardman and Tasker died 10 months later on the northeast ridge of Everest, and Alan Rouse passed away on K2 in 1986.
BY MARTIN WALSH, ANGELA BENAVIDES, ASH ROUTEN, KRIS ANNAPURNA, REBECCA MCPHEE, SAM ANDERSON, BRYON DORR, SEIJI ISHII, GALYA MORRELL, JERRY KOBALENKO
In this, the longest piece ever published on ExplorersWeb, we profile -- in no particular order -- the 100 figures who have most influenced adventure in the last century.
Some achieved their standing from one visionary accomplishment, others from an exceptional body of work. There are kayakers, polar travelers, mountaineers, ocean rowers, cavers, astronauts, archaeologists, aviators, and more.
You may find some of your personal favorites missing from this list. In some cases, this may have been simply an oversight. In others, we deemed that certain obscure figures had contributed more than others who were perhaps more famous.
All 100 have pushed the limits of their chosen fields, set a standard of excellence, and made the world better known.
1. Knud Rasmussen
Speciality: Arctic Exploration, Anthropology
Best known for: The Thule expeditions
Knud Rasmussen is a throwback to the wild days of exploration, when hardy fellows went on adventures to learn about the blank spots on the map and the people who inhabited them. This is probably why Rasmussen won't feature on many lists of explorers, as his legacy is one of knowledge over athletic achievement.
Son of a missionary, Rasmussen spent his early years in Greenland immersing himself in the local language, driving dog sleds, hunting, and picking up the dark arts of travel in the cold. Following some early expeditions at the turn of the 20th century, Rasmussen cemented his place in history with The Thule Expeditions, a series of polar exploration and ethnographic expeditions from 1912-1933. Most focused on Greenland, but the fifth and perhaps greatest of the Thule expeditions covered nearly 20,000 miles between Greenland and Siberia, including the first European dogsled journey across the Northwest Passage.
For this and his resulting ethnographic works, Rasmussen has been dubbed the "Father of Eskimology." Although never formally educated, Rasmussen's contribution to anthropology, polar exploration, and knowledge of the native people of the Arctic is recognized globally.
2. Thor Heyerdahl
Specialty: Ocean expeditions
Best known for: Crossing the Pacific Ocean on a raft
In 1947, Thor Heyerdahl and a small crew spent three-and-a-half months traveling across the Pacific Ocean. What makes this journey stand out is they did it on a raft. Heyerdahl was fascinated by how Pacific inhabitants had reached the remote Pacific islands. To test a theory (since discredited) that they came from South America, he built the Kon-Tiki, a balsa raft from natural Peruvian materials. They sailed from Peru to Polynesia to prove it was possible.
He carried out two further expeditions, this time opting for reed boats. The first was a crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, from Morocco to Central America. Again, this was to prove a theory, that the Egyptians might have influenced pre-Columbian cultures.
Next was a 4,000km voyage down the Tigris River and the Persian Gulf, across the Arabian Sea and into the Red Sea. It took four months. This time he wanted to establish the possibility that ancient Sumerians may have used similar methods to spread their culture.
3. Jerzy Kukuczka
Specialty: High-altitude climbing
Best known for: New routes and first winter ascents on 8,000'ers, second to complete all 14 of them, and fastest to climb them before the age of fixed ropes
The Polish trailblazer, lord of winter, Jerzy Kukuczka, climbed all the 14 8000'ers in seven years, 11 months, and 14 days. He held the record for 27 years.
Kukuczka was one of the Polish Ice Warriors. He climbed four of his 14 8,000'ers in winter. Three of them were first winter ascents, and he completed two of them in one season. Likewise, he summited 10 of his 14 8,000'ers via a new route, a record that remains unbroken.
While many remember the race between Kukuczka and Messner to bag all 14 8000'ers, both climbers pursued excellence on each climb, rather than mere speed. While Messner had a more individual approach to expedition planning, Kukuczka was a team player. But even as a member of large Polish expeditions, he left his imprint. He forged on when others turned back. He achieved nearly all his 8,000m summits on the first attempt, without the luxury of broken trails, fixed ropes, and well-equipped camps. Kukuczca was simply not interested in routes climbed previously by others, or in "playing for low stakes." He only used oxygen on the highest section of the new Polish route on Everest.
Kukuczka has a long list of accomplishments. He soloed Makalu in alpine style via a new route in 1981. Together with Tadeusz Piotrowski, he opened a new route alpine style on K2, which has yet to be repeated. Also, he blazed new routes on Gasherbrum I, Gasherbrum II, Broad Peak, Manaslu, Shishapangma, and Annapurna. He climbed Nanga Parbat via the previously unclimbed SE Pillar and Everest's South Pillar.
Kukuczka died while climbing the mightly South Face of Lhotse. Leading a pitch at 8,200m, with a 2,000m drop below his feet, he fell. The second-hand rope he had bought at a market in Kathmandu snapped.
In the 21st century, Kukuczka's records may be beaten on paper, but they won't be equaled because the world has changed. While the mountains remain, technology, logistics, and climbing style have changed the game.
4. Reinhold Messner
Specialty: Alpinism, High-altitude climbing
Best known for: First to climb all 14 8,000'ers and climbing them without supplementary oxygen
High-altitude mountaineering's most famous name for the last 50 years, Messner remains a strong voice in the mountaineering community at age 77. Born in South Tyrol (northern Italy but German-speaking), he broke boundaries on the Himalayan giants. In 1978 with Peter Habeler, he made the first ascent of Everest without supplementary O2. At the time, it was considered "impossible" for a human to survive at Everest's summit altitude, but Messner was determined to climb the mountain "by fair means or not at all". Two years later, he made the first solo ascent, from Tibet and in full monsoon season.
He cut his teeth in the Dolomites, quickly progressed to the Alps, the Andes, and finally to the Himalaya. Yet his first ascent of an 8,000'er was wrapped in drama. A member of a large expedition up Nanga Parbat's huge Rupal Face, Messner and his younger brother Gunther continued when the rest of the team retreated. They had to descend in a blizzard, down the unexplored Diamir Face. Messner lost seven toes but Gunther never made it down.
Messner has tried to climb in what he considers a "respectful" style, lightweight expeditions, pioneering new routes, and always without supplemental gas. Of his 14 8,000'ers, he climbed five via new routes.
5. Will Steger
Specialty: Polar Travel
Best known for: First confirmed dogsled journey to the North Pole without resupplies
American Will Steger is one of the leading figures of modern Arctic and Antarctic travel, with a particular focus on dogsled travel. Steger made the first confirmed dogsled journey to the North Pole (without resupply) in 1986, completed a 2,500km traverse of Greenland in 1988, and then made the first dogsled traverse of Antarctica in 1989, a 5,500km slog across the coldest continent.
As well as giving lectures and writing, Steger has focused in recent decades on climate change advocacy. In 2006, he started the Will Steger Foundation to engage people about climate change solutions.
6. Borge Ousland
Specialty: Polar Travel
Best known for: First solo unsupported crossing of Antarctica
Without question the finest modern polar adventurer, and perhaps the best ever. In the 1990s, Ousland bagged most of the remaining polar firsts. These included the first unsupported full-length trek to the North Pole with Erling Kagge, the first solo and unsupported full-length trek to the North Pole, and the first solo crossing of Antarctica.
To pull off these feats, the reserved Norwegian prepared meticulously, innovated with equipment (i.e. a drysuit for Arctic Ocean swimming), and carefully selected only the best expedition partners. Formerly a member of the Norwegian special forces, Ousland has combined his physical and mental resilience with a keen eye for detail.
Ousland’s most impressive expeditions have come in recent years. In 2006, he made the first unsupported full-length winter trek to the North Pole with the irrepressible Mike Horn (also featured on this list). In 2019, Ousland and Horn teamed up again to cross the Arctic Ocean by boat and ski in autumn-winter. Ousland declared this his greatest achievement, and Horn reckoned that it was the hardest expedition he had ever done.
7. Ed Hillary & Tenzing Norgay
Specialty: High Altitude Mountaineering
Best known for: The first summit of Mount Everest
This duo, one of the finest-ever expedition pairings, needs little introduction. On May 29, 1953, New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Nepali Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers to summit Mount Everest, as part of the ninth British expedition. Their feat made the world stop and draw its breath for just a moment.
Hillary and Tenzing were originally slated as the second summit pairing. They got bumped up when Bourdillon and Evans turned around just 100m shy of the top because of a faulty valve in Evan's bottled oxygen. Norgay had worked on more Everest expeditions than anyone else over the previous decade, and the pair had all the experience required.
The partnership of the wily, tough Kiwi and the dependable, powerful Sherpa reflected a rapidly changing world. Feted globally for their achievement, Hillary went on to take part in 10 further Himalayan expeditions, Antarctic travels, and major philanthropic work in Nepal. Norgay went on to become the first Director of Field Training of the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute and founded a trekking company.
8. Wilfrid Thesiger
Specialty: Travel writing and photography
Best known for: Spending seven years among the Ma’dān tribe
Wilfrid Thesiger spent his childhood in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and said that this is where his lifelong love of travel and adventure came from. After serving in World War II, he returned to a life of exploration.
In November 1945, he completed a two-month crossing of the Rub’al-Khali in the Arabian Peninsula, with Bedouin guides. Thesiger had been sent to the region by the British Middle East Anti-Locust Unit to find the source of locust infestations. But Thesiger had no intention of leaving after a few months. Instead, he stayed in the area for four years, exploring by camel.
He then traveled to Iraq, where he became the first European to make observations of life in the southern marshlands. He spent seven years with the Ma’dān tribe, immersing himself in their way of life. An unusual skill allowed him to gain access to a number of villages and ethnic groups during his time there: He was quite skilled at performing circumcisions. He traveled with western medicines to treat injuries and began carrying out the procedure. In his seven years there, he is said to have done over 6,000 circumcisions.
After Iraq, he traveled around Afghanistan. He then settled in Kenya before ill health forced him back to England. He wrote multiple books on his years of exploration and documented them all through photography. His book, Arabian Sands, is one of the all-time great travel narratives. After his death, his collection of over 38,000 photos was donated to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.
9. Alfred Herbert Joy
Specialty: Arctic travel
Best known for: One of the longest-ever dogsled journeys
You likely haven't heard of A.H. Joy. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officer flourished in the 1920s and early 1930s, a time when Canada was scared of losing control of its High Arctic islands to other nations. To make a statement, RCMP posts were set up in isolated locations. Every spring, the officers made "sovereignty patrols" by dogsled to strengthen the country's claim to the territory. They covered thousands of kilometers without incident, thanks largely to the Greenland Inuit who hunted food for them. It is ironic that Greenland/Denmark, one of Canada's chief rivals at the time, supplied the manpower to make these patrols succeed.
Joy was the greatest of the RCMP travelers in this era. He did several mammoth journeys in the late 1920s. On his greatest patrol, he dogsledded 4,000km in three months in 1929 from Devon Island to Melville Island and back to an RCMP post on Ellesmere Island. No drama, no frostbite, nothing bad happened. It was a tour de force of competent travel.
Eventually, Joy was "promoted" to a desk and sent south, away from his beloved Arctic. He killed himself the night before his wedding day, in the prestigious Chateau Laurier hotel in Ottawa.
10. Nukapinguaq
Specialty: Arctic travel
Best known for: Guiding explorers for over 20 years
The Tenzing Norgay of the High Arctic, Nukapinguaq guided almost every white expedition between 1915 and 1937. Among many others, he accompanied A.H. Joy on his epic sovereignty patrol to Winter Harbour on Melville Island. No one ever went hungry on one of Nukapinguaq's expeditions. He was the greatest traveler the High Arctic has ever known.
His prime coincided with the era of great long-distance expeditions. In one five-year period, he covered 9,000km.
In 1953, aged 60 but still "extremely spry", Nukapinguaq and his wife spent a winter on central Ellesmere Island. A new RCMP post had just opened, but times and personnel had changed. In a bitter irony, the constables reminded Nukapinguaq -- a key figure in the sovereignty patrols of the 1920s and 1930s -- that it was illegal for Greenlanders to hunt in Canada.
11. Doug Scott
Specialty: High-altitude climbing
Best known for: Everest Southwest Face, pure alpine style
We have chosen Doug Scott as the representative from a group of visionary British climbers who trail-blazed a pure alpine style on big walls around the world.
He took part in some 50 major expeditions, driven by new routes, high difficulty, and ingenuity. Thirty of these expeditions culminated in first ascents.
Scott gained fame after his excellent first ascent of the SW Face of Everest with Dougal Haston in 1975. They summited but had to spend the night 100m below the summit, with no tent or sleeping bag. They made it back alive and with all their toes and fingers.
But there's a world of mountains beyond Everest, and Scott took the best from it. He pioneered routes in Kenya, Baffin Island, and elsewhere in the Himalaya. He was part of the unparalleled first ascent to Shishapangma's South Face in the purest alpine style, and the ascents on Pakistan's Ogre and India's Shivling, together with Chris Bonington.
Scott continued to climb while he could move his legs. His last activity, sick with cerebral cancer and in full lockdown from the COVID pandemic, was climbing the stairs of his home, dressed in high-altitude attire and ice-ax in hand, to raise funds for a Nepal-based charity. He passed away some months later, aged 79.
12. Ed Gillet
Specialty: Sea kayaking
Best known for: Solo kayak across the Pacific Ocean, from California to Hawaii
In June 1987, Ed Gillet set out to kayak from California to Hawaii. It is a journey no kayaker has been able to replicate, despite multiple attempts. Over 64 days, he paddled across the Pacific Ocean in an off-the-shelf, 20-foot Tofino double kayak. Arriving three weeks later than planned, his family and authorities were sure he had perished.
Before GPS devices and satphones, Gillet relied on thrice-daily sextant readings to find his way. The journey was rife with challenges. His rudder broke in the first week, he lost crucial gear to rough seas, open sores spread over his body and forced him to take sedatives, with side effects that included panic attacks and depression. His food ran out after 60 days. For the final four days, he survived on bits of toothpaste.
Thirty years after the legendary journey, Dave Shively convinced Gillet to let him write a book of his story. In 2013, The Pacific Alone was published.
13. Neil Armstrong
Specialty: Astronaut
Best known for: The first man to walk on the moon
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong uttered the words, "That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” as his boot touched the surface of the moon. Alongside Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins, he spent four days in Apollo 11 before landing near the southwestern edge of the Sea of Tranquillity.
Armstrong was the first to walk on the moon. He and Aldrin left Apollo 11 for over two hours to explore, collect samples, and take photographs.
Armstrong joined the space program in 1962, and walking on the moon was not his only world first. In 1966 he was the command pilot of Gemini 8 and completed the first manual space-docking maneuver. Throughout his career, he was at the forefront of space exploration. After the moon landing, he moved out of the spotlight. He was not interested in being a public figure. He resigned from NASA in 1971 and moved into the academic world as a professor of aerospace engineering.
14. Fred Beckey
Specialty: Rock Climbing, Mountaineering
Best known for: Exploratory first ascents
American mountaineer Fred Beckey was once called the most accomplished climber of all time. Leading alpinist Colin Haley suggests that “the volume of climbing he has done, near and at the cutting edge, is leagues beyond anyone else. When World War II was in full swing and most people’s attention was focused on battles outside the mountains, two teenage brothers from Seattle, Fred and Helmy Beckey, were quietly making a harrowing second ascent of Mount Waddington in British Columbia. No other human was to step atop Waddington for the next 35 years, such is its difficulty.
Fred Beckey’s drive for difficult and audacious climbs prompted him to make first ascents of remote peaks all across America and around the world, as far back as the 1930s and, even more astonishingly, well into the 2000s. Beckey shunned a conventional family life to dedicate himself to the mountains, and live the life of a climbing dirtbag. He probably made more first ascents of mountains and climbing routes than any other explorer in history.
Beckey was also a scholar of the mountains. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of thousands of peaks around the globe. He took a keen interest in geology and the environment before it became popular to do so. This translated into a literary legacy of 13 books, which have inspired successive generations of climbers. Beckey defiantly continued climbing until he passed away in 2017 at the age of 94.
15. Robert Ballard
Specialty: Maritime archaeology
Best known for: Discovering the Titanic shipwreck
In 1985, Robert Ballard solved a mystery; Where was the Titanic? The ship sank in 1912 but despite numerous attempts over seven decades, its location eluded everyone.
Though this is what he is best known for, finding the Titanic was not his goal. He was testing a new submersible he designed and this was just an exciting way to test its capabilities.
Ballard was a pioneer in the field of oceanography and submersibles. He developed multiple submersibles and discovered thermal vents in the Galapagos Rift and submarine volcanoes on the Pacific Rise.
One of his submersibles was the Argo. It was a sled that could send live images back to a monitor on the surface, and it was this that he used to find the Titanic. After a month of searching, he recorded the first images of the ocean liner on September 1, 1985. His videos revealed that the famous ship had split in two. He later visited the site himself in another self-designed submersible, Alvin.
16. Jacques Cousteau
Specialty: Underwater exploration
Best known for: Co-inventing the aqualung
Scuba diving changed the face of underwater exploration, and Jacques Cousteau was at the forefront of this. In 1943, with Emile Gagnan, he invented the first fully automatic compressed air aqualung.
He was not a trained scientist but was drawn to the ocean and her mysteries. The aqualung was not his only invention. He also built a number of underwater cameras and a small submarine that could explore the seafloor. Many of his inventions became commonplace tools for oceanographers.
In 1950, he converted an old British minesweeper into a research ship which he named Calypso.
Throughout his life, he was spearheaded ocean research and is credited with popularizing oceanography as a research field, and scuba diving as a sport. He produced a myriad of documentaries that chronicle his life.
17. Yuri Gagarin
Specialty: Astronaut
Best known for: The first person to reach outer space
On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first person to journey into outer space. The Soviet pilot and cosmonaut spent one hour and 29 minutes orbiting earth in Vostok 1.
Gagarin graduated from the Soviet Air Force cadet school in 1957, and just four years later carried out his only space flight. The journey catapulted him into the spotlight and brought him worldwide fame. Though he never carried out another space flight, he continued to train other cosmonauts. In 1968, he was killed during a routine training flight, when his two-seat jet aircraft crashed.
18. Sven Hedin
Specialty: Central Asia
Best known for: Creating the first detailed maps of the Trans-Himalaya range in Tibet
After being hired as an interpreter for a Swedish-Norwegian expedition to Iran, Sven Hedin knew he wanted a life of travel and adventure. He went on to visit Persia and Turkestan. Then crossed the Ural Mountains and the Pamirs.
Hedin did not stick to one type of expedition. After his initial mountain journeys, he spent three years in the Gobi Desert. In 1905, he returned to higher altitudes to explore the Trans-Himalaya. From his journey, he created the first detailed map of the mountains in Tibet.
His other interest was archaeology. From 1927 to 1933, he carried out research in western China that uncovered 327 archaeological sites. In what is a present-day desert, he found evidence of an extensive Stone Age culture. Many published works detail his findings.
19. Anne Stine Ingstad
Specialty: Archaeology
Best known for: Discovering the only confirmed Viking settlement in North America
In 1961, Anne Stine Ingstad retraced a Viking voyage along the northern tip of Newfoundland with her husband Helge Ingstad. Though Helge is often credited for the discovery of the 1,000-year-old Viking outpost, it was in fact Anne who coordinated and supervised the excavation of the site.
The discovery provided the first conclusive evidence that Vikings made it to North America 500 years prior to Columbus. The couple sailed along the northern tip of Newfoundland and were led by locals to L’Anse aux Meadows, the location of the outpost. At first glance, there was no sign of Viking inhabitancy, but Anne began digging. Once her husband had seen the outline of the old turf wall, Anne completed the rest.
Over several summers, she continued to lead excavation work there. She uncovered the foundations of eight buildings and a stone spinning wheel, suggesting that women had been among the group.
20. Junius Bird
Specialty: Archaeology
Best known for: Being one of the models for Indiana Jones
Whether in Asia, the Arctic, or South America, the energetic Junius Bird seemed to venture everywhere. He specialized in the primitive cultures of the Western Hemisphere. During the 1930s and 1940s, he discovered the earliest human remains found in South America at the time. Bird is recognized as one of the inspirations for the character Indiana Jones, maybe simply because of the rakish fedora, maybe because of his high-spirited approach to field archaeology.
Bird didn't begin as an archaeologist but as a deckhand to famed arctic skipper Bob Bartlett. In this brief clip, a grinning, bearded Bird, center, playfully nuzzles Bartlett with his chin whiskers.
Bird’s most famous expedition took place in Chile. There, his team discovered human remains, along with skeletons of extinct horses and giant sloths. The discovery indicated that Paleo-Indians inhabited the southern tip of South America by 9,000 B.C., earlier than previously thought. For many years, Bird also curated the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
21. George Mallory
Specialty: Climbing, high-altitude pioneer
Best known for: The quest for Everest's first ascent and subject of an all-time expedition mystery
George H.L. Mallory is the mountaineering equivalent of a knight in shining armor, galloping on his white horse to face the dragon of Chomolungma.
He was an outstanding Cambridge student, a charming gentleman, a loving fiancee, a bold soldier who survived the horrors of the Somme, and a natural-born climber. When Britain's Alpine Club organized a reconnaissance expedition to Everest in 1921, Mallory was one of the first names on the list.
That year, Mallory mapped a possible route from Tibet to the highest point on the planet. In the second venture, one year later, he aimed to reach the top. The expedition brought with them cutting-edge technology: supplementary O2. But Mallory and his mates didn't use it. Still, they reached 8,250m, before eventually being forced back.
On June 8, 1924, Mallory and Sandy Irvine set off from their last camp at 8,100m toward the summit. An expedition member in Base Camp claimed he had spotted them in the afternoon when the clouds broke for just a moment. But that was all. Mallory was lost and a legend was born.
Already popular, the mysterious end of the young explorer turned him into a legend. The uncertainty about whether he might have reached the (first ever) summit of Everest has fed hours of debate, and thousands of pages in books and articles.
Mallory's body was found in 1999 at 8,155m. It was determined that the cause of death was a fall. Irvine's body has not yet been found. Mysteriously, the climbers who found Mallory's remains uncovered several personal items among the rags of his clothes, but not a camera. Mallory departed toward the summit carrying a pocket Kodak camera which he would surely have used to take summit pictures if they had reached that far. Since then, Mallory's camera, which could be with Irvine's body, is the most sought-after object on Everest.
22. H.W. Tilman
Specialty: Mountaineering and sailing
Best known for: Mount Everest Reconnaissance Expedition, first ascents of Paldor and Batian’s West Ridge
H.W Tilman fought in World Wars I and II and was an excellent mountaineer. In 1938, he led a reconnaissance expedition to Mount Everest and climbed to 8,290m without oxygen. He also went on several expeditions to the Nanda Devi sanctuary, and made the first ascent of Paldor, a Nepal “trekking peak”.
"The Major", as he was known, made a mark on the other side of the world by being the first to ascend the West Ridge of Mount Kenya’s highest peak, Batian. He ascended more African peaks like Kilimanjaro, Speke, Baker, and Mount Stanley.
In his later years, he sailed his own yacht, the Mischief, on climbing expeditions to Greenland. He vanished at sea near the Falkland Islands, aged 79.
23. Eric Shipton
Specialty: Exploration, mapping, climbing
Best known for: Pioneering light style, Nanda Devi
Eric Shipton was a hard-core traveler, an avid mountaineer, and an explorer, but also a diplomat in the years after the Second World War. He was the first westerner to see places that are now dream destinations for trekkers, such as the Barun and Rolwaling Valleys in Nepal, and others currently closed to foreigners, such as China's Kashgar and Nanda Devi Sanctuary. He even took the first well-known picture of a "yeti" footprint.
Huge expedition teams were popular at the time, but Shipton believed in small, flexible teams. At 24, he was a member of the team that achieved the first ascent of India's Mount Kamet, at 7,756m then the highest summit ever climbed. It was only logical that he also took part in several expeditions to Everest.
Shipton was a member of the 1951 expedition which spotted and mapped the route through the Khumbu Icefall on the Nepali side of the mountain. Unfortunately, and much to his dismay, his preference for smaller teams got him kicked off the 1953 Everest expedition, which eventually bagged the first ascent.
24. Walter Bonatti
Specialty: Alpine and high-altitude climbing
Best known for: North faces in the Alps, K2
Aficionados of mountaineering history often pick Walter Bonatti as their favorite climber. The Italian's allure goes beyond statistics. It's not just what he climbed, but how. It's about attitude, honesty, spirit, and his genuine love for adventure.
Walter Bonatti was a gifted rock climber. From age 19, he followed in the footprints of his idol, Ricardo Cassin. He repeated Cassin's routes in the Alps, such as the Walker Spur of the Grandes Jorasses.
His skill led to a position on Ardito Desio's expedition to K2, which aimed for the first ascent. But the expedition did not go well. Bonatti was accused of using O2 meant for the assigned summiters, Laceddelli and Compagnony. It was also suggested that he neglected the Pakistani Madhi, with whom he spent a night in the open at 8,000m. In fact, the opposite was true. It took Bonatti years, two books, and a lawsuit to prove his innocence. He never forgave his climbing comrades.
After K2, he climbed more strongly than ever, as though driven by rage. He soloed the Dru's Southwest Pillar in 1955 and bagged the first ascent of the hyper-difficult Gasherbrum IV in 1958. In 1965, he soloed the North Face of the Matterhorn in winter.
And then he quit. He simply gave up climbing, though he did continue to lead a life of adventure as a magazine journalist. He died peacefully in 2011 at age 81. But the mountaineers of his and subsequent generations have not forgotten him.
25. Richard Bangs
Specialty: Expedition whitewater kayaking
Best known for: Adventure literature and films
In college, Richard Bangs spent his summers as a Colorado River guide in the Grand Canyon. Soon, he was on to bigger and better things. In 1973, he and a crew successfully ran Ethiopia’s Awash River. The expedition solidified his reputation as one of the world’s best river guides.
Soon, the group founded Sobek Expeditions, which helped Bangs and his partners rack up 35 first descents.
He went on to a prolific career in writing and film directing. He has published 19 books, including The Lost River: A Memoir of Life, Death and the Transformation of Wild Water, which won the National Outdoor Book Award. In 2005, he co-directed the IMAX film Mystery of the Nile, which chronicles the 114-day first full descent of the Blue Nile from source to sea.
26. Peter Freuchen
Specialty: Arctic exploration
Best known for: Arctic exploration, researching Inuit culture, popular writing
Danish explorer and writer Peter Freuchen stood a hulking two metres tall, made himself a fur coat from a polar bear he killed, and amputated his frostbitten toes with pliers. A famous storyteller, he once claimed to have fashioned a dagger from his feces to cut his beard free from a piece of ice on which it was stuck. He also won the $64,000 Question game show.
After dropping out of university, he traveled to Greenland where he and Knud Rasmussen established a trading post in far northwest Greenland. He studied Inuit culture and joined Rasmussen on the famous Fifth Thule Expedition.
He eventually had to stop exploring when he lost his toes and one leg on his last expedition in 1926. This did not stop him from founding the Adventurer’s Club of Denmark or joining the Danish resistance during World War II.
27. Ned Gillette
Specialty: Skier, climber, adventurer
Best known for: The first single-day climb of Denali
Ned Gillette is best known for his outlandish, dangerous, and quite brilliant 19-hour climb of Denali with photographer Galen Rowell in 1978, but he had many strings to his bow.
He and his party were the first Americans to climb the remote Muztagh Ata (7,509m) in China and completed its first ski descent to boot. Gillette’s adventures included a 500km ski traverse of the Brooks Range, a three-month sledding adventure on northern Ellesmere Island, and a 1978 circumnavigation of Denali, the first in 70 years.
In New Zealand, he traversed the southern Alps with Jan Reynolds, Allan Bard, and Tom Carter. Their 200km trip, estimated to take 10 days, eventually took a month, including a brutal seven-day stint in a snow cave.
Gillette sailed an enclosed rowboat across the Drake Passage between Chile and Antarctica, often referred to as the most dangerous stretch of water in the world.
A good climber, adventurer, and charismatic character, he was murdered at the age of 53 in the Karakoram. In their Base Camp at Laila Peak, he and his wife were attacked in their tent one night, presumably during a robbery attempt. His wife survived.
28. Junko Tabei
Specialty: Alpinist
Best known for: The first woman to climb Mount Everest
Japanese climber Junko Tabei topped out on Mount Everest in 1975, becoming the first woman to summit the highest mountain on Earth. Earlier, in 1970, she climbed the difficult Annapurna III without bottled oxygen. Tabei was also the first female climber to complete the Seven Summits.
She also worked to reduce the environmental impact caused by climbers. A mountain range on Pluto is named after her.
29. Freya Stark
Specialty: Arabian travel
Best known for: Travel writing
Freya Stark forged a career as a respected travel writer. The Parisian had a particular fondness for exploring the Middle East and Afghanistan. She was one of the first non-Arabs to cross the Southern Arabian Desert and completed three adventurous treks into the wilderness of western Iran. During World War II, she spent two years in Iraq assisting the British regime.
In her 25 books, Stark described repressive government systems and detailed abuse in places where travel was forbidden. Stark’s great courage and language skills supported a lifetime of travel to dangerous destinations.
30. Francis Chichester
Specialty: Sailing and aviation
Best known for: First person to sail solo around the world, west to east
Francis Chichester set out from Portsmouth in August 1966 aboard Gipsy Moth IV. Over 266 days, he broke three records: the fastest voyage around the world by a small vessel, the longest passage by a small vessel (25,000km), and the third true circumnavigation by a small vessel via Cape Horn.
As he sailed back into Portsmouth, over a quarter of a million people and 300 boats, horns blaring, greeted him. The historic event was televised globally.
In 1931 he became the first person to fly solo across the Tasman Sea. He also planned to become the first person to circumnavigate the globe by plane but his hopes ended when he crashed in Japan.
In the Second World War, he pioneered fighter pilot navigation, then turned his sights to the sea. Before the Gipsy Month IV, the Gipsy Moth III won the first solo transatlantic sailing race with Chichester at the helm. More impressive still, he did so while recovering from cancer.
31. Dougal Haston
Specialty: Climbing
Best known for: First ascents on new routes
A Scottish climber who started with rock climbing before moving on to mountaineering. Together with four German companions, he opened the Direttissima John Harlin route on the North Face of Eiger.
In 1970, Dougal Haston and Don Whillans made the first ascent of the South Face of Annapurna. He often climbed with Chris Bonington, and Haston was in the group that made the first ascent of Changabang in the Indian Himalaya. In 1975, Haston and Doug Scott summited Everest via a new route on the Southwest Face. It was the first time anyone had ascended the highest mountain in the world by one of its faces. That night, they made the highest-ever bivouac at the time, in an ice cave at 8,750m.
He was also a member of the team that made the first ascent of the Southwest Face of Denali.
He died at the age of 36 in an avalanche in Switzerland.
32. Chris Bonington
Specialty: Expeditionary mountaineer
Best known for: The first ascent of Baintha Brakk (The Ogre) in 1977, together with Doug Scott
He made and led a lot of expeditions to the Himalaya. In 1963, together with Don Whillans, he made the first ascent of Torres del Paine in Chile. In 1974, with Don Whillans, Doug Scott, and Dougal Haston, he climbed Changabang and he led another successful first ascent of Kongur Tagh in the Pamirs.
But it's his climb on The Ogre with Doug Scott that is best known, thanks to one of the most epic descents in the history of alpinism.
Bonington is one of the most influential mountaineers ever.
33. Gaston Rebuffat
Specialty: Guiding, climbing
Best known for: The six North Faces of the Alps
The paradigm of a Chamonix mountain guide, Gaston Rebuffat was the first person to climb the six great North Faces of the alps: Grandes Jorasses, Piz Badile, Cima Grande de Lavaredo, the Matterhorn, Petit Dru, and the Eiger.
A leading light in the French climbing scene of the 1940s and 1950s, Rebuffat was so good that he became a certified mountain guide at 21, two years before the minimum age for certification.
Rebuffat was a member of the 1950 French team that summited Annapurna, the first 8,000m peak ever climbed.
His book, Starlight and Storm, inspired a generation of climbers.
34. Lionel Terray
Specialty: Guiding, climbing
Best known for: The six North Faces of the Alps
Like Rebuffat, his good friend and climbing mate on Annapurna, Lionel Terray was a full-time guide, a passionate climber, and an enthusiastic explorer. His book, The Conquistadors of the Useless, is an action-packed biography that takes the reader from Chamonix to the Andes, the Himalaya, and Patagonia.
One of the best guides in Chamonix, his strength was speed, which he applied in a visionary way on the great North Faces of the alps. In many of his highly difficult, fast ascents (including the second ascent ever of the Eigernordwand), he partnered with Louis Lachenal, who reached the summit of Annapurna in 1950 with Maurice Herzog. Lachenal returned with serious frostbite that put an end to his climbing career. Terray and Rebuffat, who didn't get to the top, resumed their guiding and climbing careers.
Terray bagged some dream first ascents: Makalu (with Jean Couzy) and Jannu in the Himalaya, Chakraraju in the Andes, Mt. Huntington's Northwest Ridge in Alaska, and Fitz Roy in Patagonia.
35. Amelia Earhart
Specialty: Aviation pioneer
Best known for: Her disappearance during a 1937 world circumnavigation
During aviation's early days, Amelia Earhart piled up numerous flying records. In 1928, she became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic as a passenger. Then in 1932, she took the controls herself, becoming the first woman to make a solo, non-stop, transatlantic flight.
Ambitious and charismatic, she achieved celebrity status as the American princess of aviation. She was an early promoter of commercial flying.
In 1937, the world was stunned when Earhart vanished during a circumnavigation of the globe. Her plane's signal disappeared somewhere over the Pacific. Although many have searched, the wreckage of her plane has never been found.
36. Percy Fawcett
Specialty: Mapping the Amazon
Best known for: Disappearing without a trace
One of the first foreigners to explore the Amazon, British explorer and archaeologist Percy Fawcett was instrumental in mapping the region. Fawcett first entered the Amazon in 1906. He uncovered new animal species and previously unknown tribes. During subsequent expeditions, he focused on locating ancient ruins described in a manuscript he found in the National Library of Brazil. Fawcett dubbed these fabled ruins the Lost City of Z.
Eighteen years after his first expedition to find the city, Fawcett set off with his son and son’s friend on a final expedition. Fawcett left a note behind, explaining that if the party failed to return, no rescue attempt should be made. They did disappear, and two years later, they were officially declared dead.
37. Beryl Markham
Specialty: Aviation pioneer
Best known for: First person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean (E-W)
In 1936, Beryl Markham made the first solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean from England to Cape Breton Island, Canada. She had intended to fly non-stop to New York, but after 20 hours flying, the vents of the fuel tank froze. She had to crash-land in Nova Scotia. After diving into a peat bog, she crawled out of her battered plane and walked for hours to get help.
Markham made a habit of being the first to do things. At 18, she became the first woman in Africa to get a racehorse trainer's license. A few years later, she was the first female commercially licensed pilot in East Africa. As a commercial pilot, she delivered mail and transported people to remote regions. She also worked as an aerial game spotter for hunters. Her memoir, West With the Night, was so well written that Ernest Hemingway said he was ashamed of himself as a writer.
38. Rune Gjeldnes
Specialty: Polar Travel
Best known for: First and only unsupported crossing of the Arctic Ocean from Russia to Canada
Like his compatriot Borge Ousland, Rune Gjeldnes served in the Norwegian Special Forces before beginning his expedition career. The first major success for Gjeldnes was a remarkable 2,900km length-wise crossing of Greenland with Torry Larsen in 1996. The two precocious Norwegians were only in their early twenties at the time and had parachuted onto the ice with their equipment.
In 2000, Gjeldnes and Larsen went one better and snatched one of the last remaining polar firsts — an unsupported land-to-land crossing of the Arctic Ocean. Gjeldnes and Larsen covered 2,100km in 109 days. They lost a total of 53kg and had just one liter of water left when they finished. The pair later titled the expedition, Dead Men Walking. At least 17 international expeditions have attempted a similar land-to-land crossing of the Arctic Ocean. A couple of them have succeeded, but only Gjeldnes and Larsen did it unsupported.
Among other notable adventures, Gjeldnes completed a three-month, 4,800km unsupported kite-ski crossing of Antarctica.
39. Mike Horn
Specialty: All-rounder
Best known for: First unsupported full-length trek to the North Pole in winter
South African-born Swiss explorer Mike Horn is irrepressible, both in his energetic personality and the range and number of adventures he has undertaken over the past three decades. After binning off a conventional career, Horn went big with his first expedition in 1997: a solo traverse of South America, including a 7,000km descent of the Amazon river by hydrospeed.
Building on this experience, Horn spent the next decade ticking off long-distance journeys. At the turn of the millennium, he made the first solo circumnavigation of the world around the Equator. He traveled unaided, on foot and by sailboat. On the same latitudinal theme, he then circled 20,000km around the Arctic Circle via boat, kayak, kite-ski, and on foot.
Perhaps his most impressive expeditions have come in colder climes with the great Norwegian, Borge Ousland. In 2006, they made the first unsupported full-length trek to the North Pole in winter. Then, in 2019, Ousland and Horn crossed the Arctic Ocean by boat and ski (1,500km) in autumn/winter. Horn has also climbed Broad Peak, Makalu, Gasherbrum I and II without oxygen. On his most impressive solo, he kite-skied 5,100km unsupported across Antarctica.
40. Hermann Buhl
Specialty: Alpinist
Best known for: One of the first climbers to use alpine style in the Himalaya
Considered one of the best of all time, the Austrian-born Buhl made the first solo summit push in history, and on a first ascent at that! That was on Nanga Parbat in 1953. Buhl even climbed without bottled O2. The ascent took him 41 hours. Buhl started his solo climb from 6,900m and had to make an emergency bivouac at 8,000m.
He also made the first ascent of Broad Peak in 1957, together with Kurt Diemberger and Markus Schmuck.
Hermann Buhl died young, at the age of 32, on Chogolisa.
41. Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner
Specialty: High-altitude climbing
Best known for: The first woman to complete the 14x8,000'ers without O2
A full-time mountaineer since she was a teenager in her native Austrian Alps, she was the first (and so far, only) woman to climb the 14 8,000'ers without supplementary O2 and no Sherpa assistants. Kaltenbrunner stands out as a world-class alpinist, regardless of gender.
Throughout her career, she has opted for small expeditions far from the crowds, a light style, and self-sufficiency. She climbed many of her peaks with her ex-husband Ralf Dujmovits, but also teamed up with Hirotaka Takeuchi, David Gottler, Maxut Zhumayev, and Vassilyi Pivtsov.
Most remarkable was her relentless will to climb K2 without O2. It took her seven attempts. On her sixth attempt, she joined forces with Fredrik Ericsson, who fell to his death on the way to the summit. Yet she found the courage to try again and succeed. The following year, in grand style, her five-person team climbed the rarely visited North Pillar, from China, and summited in August 2011. It was her last 8,000'er.
Previously, Edurne Pasaban had bagged the first female ascent; but Kaltenbrunner was never too interested in joining a race to be first. Instead, she focused on climbing the way she wanted on the mountains she loves.
42. Alexi Leonov
Specialty: Astronaut
Best known for: First person to spacewalk
The protean Alexei Leonov was a cosmonaut, a high-ranking army official, a painter, and a writer. He beat the Americans to a major first, becoming in 1965 the first person to walk in space. In 1975, he led a meet-up with American astronauts, as a Soyuz capsule docked with an Apollo capsule in a historic display of cooperation. He also became the first artist in space, thanks to the drawing pencils and pieces of paper he brought on his missions.
He was tapped for several other missions, including a flight to the Moon, but these were scrapped. However, he became a hero of the Soviet Union and was well-liked by his American counterparts.
43. Jon Muir
Specialty: Harsh climates
Best known for: Solo walk across the Australian Outback
The relentless Australian Outback didn’t stop Jon Muir. In 2001, Muir spent 128 days walking alone and unsupported across the Outback. He was already a seasoned mountaineer, long-distance kayaker, and adventure veteran, but it was his self-imposed isolation in the Australian Outback that proved legendary.
To survive, he drank from polluted puddles and dined on carcasses. When he returned, having crossed three mountain ranges and four deserts in baking 45˚C temperatures, Muir had lost a third of his body weight.
44. Yvon Chouinard
Specialty: Rock climbing, alpinism
Best known for: Equipment innovation
American Yvon Chouinard was one of the leading climbers of the Golden Age of Yosemite. With early pioneers such as Tom Frost and Royal Robbins, Chouinard made numerous first ascents on El Capitan or improved upon the style of previous ascents by using no fixed ropes. As well as a remarkable rock climber, Chouinard was a strong alpinist who put up new routes in the Rockies, Patagonia, and Kenya.
But it was in equipment innovation and outdoor clothing that Chouinard will be remembered. In his own second-hand forge, he made rock pitons and invented (with Tom Frost) other protection devices such as stoppers and Hexes. He also redesigned crampons and ice axes to perform on steeper ice, and with it kick-started modern ice climbing.
Chouinard went on to found the outdoor clothing company Patagonia, which is now a billion-dollar business, as well as being an important advocate for environmental activism.
45. Rob Lesser
Specialty: Expedition whitewater kayaking
Best known for: Paving the way for lifestyle adventure kayakers
Rob Lesser pushed the limits of exploratory Class V kayaking throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Descents of the Grand Canyon of the Stikine (1981) in British Columbia, and the North Fork of the Payette (1977) in Idaho, highlight his career.
He was also one of the first kayakers to widely travel the world, recording descents in Chile (Bio Bio, 1979), New Zealand (Nevis Bluff, 1982), Mexico, Costa Rica, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, and Norway. Besides his resumé, his approachable demeanor and obvious enthusiasm for multiple aspects of the sport made him one of its first ambassadors. Lesser eventually pioneered some of the earliest whitewater festivals in the United States and spearheaded river conservation efforts.
One of the first to turn whitewater into a career, Lesser broke ground for the many lifestyle kayakers to come.
46. Jean-Marc Boivin
Specialty: Climbing and skiing
Best known for: First paraglide descent of Mount Everest
An extreme sports pioneer during the 1970s and 1980s, Jean-Marc Boivin racked up a seemingly impossible list of world firsts. Every year, he upped the ante, pushing the boundaries of what people thought possible.
He had climbed and skied since he was a child but as a teen, he began to take on riskier lines. Over his short life, he pioneered 200 ice climbing routes, made the first north face ascent of Aiguille Verte, made the first descents of Frendo Spur, the south face of Huascaran, and the east face of the Matterhorn. He also linked the four principal faces on Mont Blanc.
Not content with just skiing and climbing, he began to add more extreme sports to his repertoire. He hang-glided from Camp IV on K2. In 1986, he set the world record for deepest sub-glacial dive. Then in 1988, he made the first paraglide descent of Mount Everest. He died in a BASE jump off Venezuela's Angel Falls at the age of 38.
47. Jeff Lowe
Specialty: Alpinist
Best known for: His masterpiece on the North Face of Eiger, "Metanoia"
One of the most important American alpinists, Jeff Lowe made several first ascents in the U.S., the Canadian Rockies, the Alps, and the Himalaya. A true believer in pure alpine-style, small teams, and minimal gear.
His greatest hits include the first ascent of Moonlight Buttress in Zion with Mike Weiss; the first winter ascent of the West Face of Grand Teton; the second ascent of Ama Dablam (solo); and the North Face of Kwangde Ri with David Breashears.
But his greatest achievement was Metanoia on the North Face of Eiger, a new direct line, solo, and without bolts.
48. Vladimir Arseniev
Specialty: Russian Far East
Best known for: The classic book, Dersu the Trapper
Vladimir Klavdievich Arseniev was a polymath who explored Russia’s Far East between 1902 and 1930. Arseniev made 12 major scientific expeditions, collating geographical, ethnographic, and botanical data as he went. He was the first to catalog much of Siberia’s plant life and roamed from the Siberian interior up to the forests fringing the Sea of Japan.
Arseniev turned his expeditions into some 60 works, the most famous of which, Dersu the Trapper, is a classic. Published in 1941, it combines an adventure narrative with Arseniev’s wide-ranging scientific knowledge. The titular character, Dersu, is a member of the Gold tribe and is likely a composite of several guides Arseniev teamed up with during three expeditions into the Ussurian taiga. Real-life experiences drive the book: extreme cold, blizzards, and floods. But the hardships unite the men, across cultural and linguistic barriers.
Posthumously, Arsevniev has become well-known in Russia. In 2018, Vladivostok's international airport was renamed after him.
49. Steve Fossett
Specialty: Aviation in all forms
Best known for: First solo world circumnavigation in a balloon
On July 2, 2002, Steve Fossett landed back on Australian soil after 13 days and 33,000km in the air. He had just completed the first solo circumnavigation of the globe in a balloon.
Achieving this was no mean feat. It was his sixth attempt at the record-breaking journey. His first ended after three days. He had carefully planned this attempt, avoiding conditions that could hamper his efforts. Days of good weather were predicted and tailwinds of 300kph pushed him along at some points. He opted for a Southern Hemisphere route to avoid any dangerous airspace.
Fossett filled his life with high adrenaline activities and record attempts. He swam the English Channel in the 1980s, took part in dogsled and car racing, skied, climbed, and flew.
In 2005, he became the first person to fly solo around the world without refueling. His specialized plane carried 13 fuel tanks. The 67-hour journey started and ended in Kansas, in the American Midwest. He died in 2007.
50. Ivan Papanin
Specialty: Arctic
Best known for: Leader of the first expedition to land at the North Pole
In 1937, the Soviet polar explorer Ivan Papanin led the North Pole-1 expedition, which was the first time anyone had actually set foot on the geographic North Pole.
The Soviet government set up the expedition to study ice movement along the Northern Sea route. Their vessels kept getting trapped in the ice and they needed a solution. Papanin led the group of four men. With him were Ernst Krenkel (radio operator), Evgeny Fyodorov (geologist), and Pyotr Shirshov (oceanologist). They set up a mobile laboratory on a 30-by-30-metre ice floe and drifted for 274 days on the Arctic Ocean.
By the time they were picked up on the east coast of Greenland, Papanin had lost 30kg. Over the course of the journey, they took measured currents and discovered an underwater mountain range. At the time, Fridtjof Nansen had a theory that no animal life existed atop the Arctic Ocean. To their surprise, the foursome saw polar bears, seals, and other marine creatures, refuting Nansen's theory.
51. Yevgeniy and Vitaly Abalakov
Specialty: High-altitude climbing
Best known for: First ascents in the Pamirs and Tien Shan, equipment innovation
The Avalakov brothers were the most outstanding climbers in the former Soviet Union. Yevgeniy became a hero in the USSR after his 1933 first ascent of the highest peak in the Soviet Union. Called Stalin Peak at the time, it was later renamed Communism Peak and today, Ismail Somoni (7,495m). Yevgeniy was the only one from a very large team who made it to the top He was so exhausted that he had to crawl on all fours to reach the summit.
He continued to climb, research, and map the Pamir range until the Second World War when he exchanged the mountains for the terrible Russian front. He met a mysterious end in 1948 in Moscow.
His brother, Vitaly, is considered a pioneer of Soviet alpinism. He made the first ascents of Lenin Peak and Khan Tengri. An engineer by profession, he designed all kinds of climbing gear, from eccentric bolts to ice screws. His most famous creation is the Abalakov "V" anchor. Made with climbing rope, it's a life-saving method for rappelling on icy terrain. It requires no extra gear and it is still sometimes used in alpine and ice climbing. But all these contributions were not enough to spare him from years of investigation by Soviet security forces, which accused of promoting western alpinism and spying for Germany.
52. Fritz Wiessner
Specialty: Climber
Best known for: Pioneer of free climbing
Reinhold Messner once called German-American climber Fritz Wiessner the most pivotal mountaineer of the 20th century. He influenced sport climbing, rock climbing, and mountaineering. Born in Germany, Wiessner put up routes in the Alps that were grades ahead of anything in North America in the 1920s. After moving Stateside in the late 1920s, Wiessner put up new climbs and first ascents all across the U.S., including the first summit of Mount Waddington.
In 1939, Wiessner led an American expedition to K2 and came within 200m of the summit before having to retreat. The deaths of three of the climbing team, and controversy over Wiessner's role, dogged the rest of his life. Had they succeeded, Wiessner and company would have been the first to summit an 8,000m peak. Although he did not return to the Greater Ranges, Wiessner climbed well into his 80s around the world, making ski mountaineering ascents and climbing all the 4,000m peaks in the Alps.
53. Lars Holbek
Specialty: Expedition whitewater kayaking
Best known for: Pioneering California whitewater
To understand Lars Holbek’s legacy, consider that he wrote a book that’s still considered the definitive guide to whitewater kayaking in California today — in 1984. Of his many first descents, most came in California, giving him the vast knowledge it took to write The Best Whitewater in California.
Holbek started kayaking in an era that may now seem prehistoric. When he paddled whitewater for the first time in 1973, he recalled crashing through Class III rapids with no helmet or life jacket. At the time, the sport barely existed — he and a friend soon built their own fiberglass kayaks and started exploring their local waterways.
Though he logged over 70 first descents all over the planet, including the first descent of the Stikine with Rob Lesser, Holbek’s laid-back attitude anchored his reputation. Outside the whitewater, his conservation work helped save an important Tuolumne River tributary from damming.
54. Louis Leakey
Specialty: Archaeology and human evolution
Best known for: Proving humans evolved in Africa
Louis Leakey changed history by proving that humans came from Africa, not Asia. His most famous discoveries featured animal fossils and crude stone tools which he uncovered in Tanzania during 1931. But a crucial observation in 1955 cemented his legacy. Together with his wife, Leakey pointed out that remains discovered in Africa were older than, and unique from, those previously discovered in Asia.
Although it took years for Leakey’s findings to gain credibility, his work changed how we view human evolution. Later, Leakey encouraged the primate work of several protégés who later became famous themselves, including Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey.
55. Renato Casarotto
Specialty: Alpinist
Best known for: New routes and solo climbs
In 1982, Renato Casarotto climbed the Trilogy of Freney. Three years later, he made the first solo (and first winter) ascent of the Grandes Jorasses.
On the Cordillera Blanca in Peru, he climbed a new line via the northeast ridge of Huandoy East and the south face of Huandoy South. Other notable achievements include the North Pillar of Fitz Roy in Patagonia and Gasherbrum II in 1985, which he climbed with his wife.
Some of his failed climbs were also of note. He attempted Makalu in winter and made two attempts on the Magic Line on K2. The second attempt, in 1986, killed him. Casarotto turned back 300m from the top due to bad weather and died during the descent. His body was found in 2004.
56. Tom Hornbein & Willi Unsoeld
Speciality: Alpinists
Best known for: The first traverse of an 8,000m peak
In 1963, Willi Unsoeld and Tom Hornbein established a new route on Everest via the West Ridge. A very steep, "no return" section of their route has since been called the Hornbein Couloir. They descended via the South Col where they met up with fellow expedition members Lute Jerstad and Barry Bishop. The four, after running out of supplementary oxygen, bivouacked at 8,534m. Tom Hornbein memorably wrote after: "Each one dedicated himself to shivering from the cold until the first light, then the Sun rose over the Kangchenjunga, and the whole world woke up.”
Three years earlier, Willi Unsoeld and George Bell made the first ascent of 7,821m Masherbrum, also known as K1.
57. Harry Saint John Philby
Specialty: Desert exploration
Best known for: Crossing the Rub Al-Khali
Harry Saint John Bridger Philby's explorations began during World War I but continued well into the 1930s and beyond. The British explorer was a colleague of T.E. Lawrence and did his best to serve both British and Arabian interests, although he had difficulty being impartial.
He was interested in animal life and the landscape. In 1930, he became the first non-resident to traverse the Rub Al-Khali, a 650,000 sq km portion of the Arabian desert.
58. Denis Urubko
Specialty: High altitude climbing
Best known for: New routes on 8,000ers, winter climbs, rescues
Denis Urubko is a 14x8000'er summiter, but much more besides. He has never used or even considered supplementary O2 and has climbed two 8,000'ers in winter -- first winter ascents of Makalu and Gasherbrum II, on both occasions with Simone Moro. Urubko has pioneered many new routes: Manaslu, Cho Oyu (from the south side!), Broad Peak, and Gasherbrum II. He is an unbelievably strong climber, both physically and mentally, always leading and, in some cases, continuing when others retreat.
He has also made a habit of rescuing others. In 2008, he flew to Annapurna to help Iñaki Ochoa de Olza, sick on the southeast ridge. In 2018, he left a winter attempt on K2 to help Elisabeth Revol and Tomasz Mackiewicz, stuck high on Nanga Parbat.
For his role in the Iñaki rescue attempt, Urubko earned Spain's highest honor. Saving Revol's life resulted in the French Legion of Honor, which he shared with Adam Bielicki and Rafal Fronia.
Recently, Urubko has focused on rock climbing and has tentatively said that he has finished with 8,000'ers.
59. Edurne Pasaban
Specialty: High altitude climbing
Best known for: First woman 14x8,000m summiter
Pasaban belongs to an outstanding generation of climbers from the Spanish Basque Country. Here, mountaineering is more than a hobby, it is an intrinsic part of the Basque culture. She began climbing at 15 and followed an intense progression to higher mountains.
She climbed her first 8,000er in 2001: Everest, the only one where she used supplementary O2. Nine years later, she completed the 14x8000'ers on Shishapangma. Shortly before, Oh Eun-sun of South Korea claimed to be the first female to complete the 14x8000'ers, but her ascent of Kangchenjunga was uncertain. The Himalayan Database's Elizabeth Hawley never accepted it and instead proclaimed Pasaban as the first woman to climb all 14 8,000m peaks.
Pasaban has always climbed in bigger teams, often including a film crew for Spanish TV, so all her climbs are well-documented.
After completing the 14 8000'ers, Pasaban led a failed attempt to climb Everest without O2 but has not returned since.
60. Wanda Rutkiewicz
Specialty: Alpinism, high-altitude mountaineering
Best known for: The first woman to climb K2
When she was 18, Polish mountaineer Wanda Rutkiewicz was a promising volleyball player. But when her old motorbike ran out of gas, one of the men who stopped to help out was a climber. Rutkiewicz accepted his invitation to climb in the nearby hills. This first taste of the outdoors began a journey to the pinnacle of mountaineering.
In the late 1970s, Rutkiewicz cut her teeth in the Greater Ranges by apprenticing on an expedition to Pakistan, led by Andrzej Zawada. But she found it difficult to gel with the male climbers, who were no doubt sexist toward her. From then on, Rutkiewicz trod her own path as an expedition leader. In 1978, she became the first European woman to summit Everest.
Before perishing on Kanchenjunga in 1992, Rutkiewicz had set her eyes on becoming the first woman to climb all 14 8,000m peaks. She managed nine of them, and in 1986 became the first woman to summit K2. As strong as the best male mountaineers of her era, Rutkiewicz blazed a trail for the next generations of female climbers.
61. Valentyna Tereshkova
Specialty: Astronaut
Best known for: The only woman to go alone into space
Russia's Valentyna Tereshkova is the only woman to have been on a solo space mission. During the 1960s space race, Tereshkova was selected as a cosmonaut, thanks to her skydiving experience. At 26 years old, she launched into space on board the Vostok 6.
From inside, she radioed down: “I see the horizon; it's a sky blue with a dark stripe. How beautiful the Earth is...everything is going well." When she returned to earth, Tereshkova was hailed as a national hero.
The singular event cast Tereshkova into the world of celebrity. She was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union medal and eventually, she moved into a political career.
62. Walt Blackadar
Specialty: Whitewater kayaking
Best known for: First descents
Walt Blackadar only started kayaking in his mid-40s. He was a middle-aged, slightly stout doctor. His first loves were hunting and fishing, but during one fishing trip, he and a friend rented a rubber raft and ran some Grade 4 rapids on the Salmon River. They then did this every spring from 1953 until 1967, when they decided to tackle the river in kayaks.
Blackadar had fallen in love with whitewater rivers. He was known for his gung-ho attitude and for pushing the boundaries of kayaking. In 1971, he completed a run that threw him into the spotlight -- Turnback Canyon on the Alsek River in Alaska. It is a walled-in section of Grade 5 whitewater. Before Blackadar, it had never been attempted and was thought impossible. His success earned him a Sports Illustrated cover story.
His adventures saw him featured on ABC’s American Sportsman multiple times. In his relatively short kayaking career, he paddled the Grand Canyon, ran rivers on the Kenai Peninsula, and made multiple attempts on Sustina River’s Devil Canyon Rapids. He may not have been the most technical kayaker, but he had gumption. Blackadar regularly set off with just a gun and some vodka. He smuggled a handgun and marijuana into Canada, and he pulled Evel Knievel out of Snake River after his failed sky-rocket jump. Throughout all of this, he remained a skilled doctor and surgeon, juggling his career and hobby with apparent ease.
At age 56, he died in his kayak. He took on the South Fork of the Payette, something he had done before, but became pinned under a log and drowned.
63. Marek Holecek
Specialty: Climber, explorer
Best known for: Alpine style
One of the best climbers in the world, Marek Holecek of the Czech Republic is a two-time Piolet D'Or winner. He won it in 2018 for the Southwest Face of Gasherbrum I with Zdenek Hak, and in 2020, for the Northwest Face of Chamlang (7,321m, Nepal), again with Zdenek Hak.
He has made first ascents and opened new routes in Huandoy Norte in Peru, Kyazo Ri in Nepal, Monte Samila in Antarctica, Talung in Nepal, Kohe Uparisina in Afghanistan, Mount Meru in India, Kyashar in Nepal, and Amin Brakk in Pakistan. In 2021, he and his climbing partner Radoslav Groh made a new rouse on Baruntse, with an epic descent.
64. Peter Hamor
Speciality: Alpinist
Best known for: Climbing Annapurna twice, from each side
Slovakian Peter Hamor has experience in the Tian Shan, Alps, Karakoram, and Himalaya. He famously climbed Annapurna via a new route in 2006 with Piotr Morawski and Piotr Pustelnik. In 2010, he firmly established himself as one of the world's elite climbers when he summited Annapurna again, this time up the North Face. He became the first mountaineer to summit the most dangerous 8,000m peak from both sides.
Another of his greatest achievements was the traverse of Gasherbrum I from south to north, combined with the ascent of Gasherbrum II, in 2008. Hamor has climbed all 8,000m peaks without supplementary oxygen. He continues to explore new routes on the highest mountains.
65. Eugene Smurgis
Specialty: Arctic, long-distance rowing
Best known for: First polar ocean rower, first to row Northeast Passage
Russian rower Eugene Smurgis used to be a phys ed teacher, but he most enjoyed testing his true skills outside the classroom. He took up rowing and became an absolute beast in the water. From the 1960s to the 1990s, he rowed distances like no other rower on Earth, 48,000km over a 26-year period, breaking several records.
He was the world’s first polar rower and navigated Russia’s ice-choked Northeast Passage and most of the country's major lakes and rivers.
66. Jim Bridwell
Specialty: Big-wall climbing
Best known for: Climbing El Capitan's Nose in a day
Jim Bridwell was born to be wild, and he lived up to the motto until the very end. One of the so-called stone masters of Yosemite, his name is linked to over 100 routes on the granite big walls of the legendary valley. Together with John Long, he achieved the first ascent of El Capitan’s Nose in a day.
Bridwell’s territory spanned far beyond California. He led great climbs in Alaska and achieved the first alpine-style ascent of Patagonia’s Cerro Torre via the Southwest Ridge. With Jan Reynolds and Ned Gillette, he opened a nice line on Pumori's South Face.
He was also a rock‘n’roll star, living fast and wild. His last years were hard, mainly due to financial problems. He took many risks on the mountains, but the mountains were kind to Bridwell. Instead, it was life in the lowlands that proved lethal. In the end, he died of hepatitis C that he had contracted while having a tattoo done in Borneo in the 1980s.
67. Robyn Davidson
Specialty: The Australian Outback
Best known for: Her walk with camels across the Australian Outback
Nowadays most people express their political frustrations via online platforms. But in the 1970s, Robyn Davidson chose to withdraw from Australia’s turbulent period of political change by spending nine months in the desert.
With four camels, Davidson walked 2,700km west across the Australia Outback from Alice Springs to Shark Bay. En route, she dealt with dehydration and sick camels. Her dog, Diggity, was poisoned. After the arduous journey, she wrote the book Tracks, which inspired generations of adventurers.
68. Chantal Mauduit
Specialty: Alpinism
Best known for: First female solo ascent of Lhotse
French mountaineer Chantal Mauduit was the fourth woman to summit K2. In the 1990s, she also climbed Shishapangma, Cho Oyu, Manaslu, and Gasherbrum II, all without oxygen. Then in 1996, she became the first woman to solo Lhotse, also without O2.
Despite her high-altitude talents, she did court some controversy along the way. Ed Viesturs and others suggested she was ungrateful while putting other climbers at risk when she had to be rescued on the way down from K2 and after a failed attempt on Everest.
Mauduit and Sherpa Ang Tsering were found dead in their tent on Dhaulagiri in 1998, possibly as a result of a rockfall or avalanche.
69. Misha Malakhov and Richard Weber
Specialty: Arctic travel
Best known for: North Pole round trip (land-to-land) unsupported
Canadian Richard Weber and Russian Misha Malakhov came from very different backgrounds, but they forged a formidable partnership to tackle a project so daunting that even Borge Ousland thought it was impossible: an unsupported trek from land to the North Pole and back. No one had tried it until Weber and Malakhov pulled it off in 1995. Because historians have now discounted Peary and Cook's claims, this was the first and only North Pole roundtrip ever.
Weber was a former national-level cross-country skier, who was part of Will Steger’s unsupported, one-way, dogsled expedition to the North Pole in 1986. Malakhov was also a strong skier who had joined a famous group of Soviet polar skiers, led by Dmitri Shparo. Among other expeditions, they skied 500km between floating ice stations on the Arctic Ocean in the dark.
The journey from Canada to the North Pole and back took 108 days. No one has even tried to do it since. Malakhov is now a businessman in Russia. Afterward, Weber led many polar expeditions as one of the early guides, including ski trips to the North and South Poles and elsewhere in the Arctic.
70. Roy Chapman Andrews
Specialty: Paleontology
Best known for: Discovering the first dinosaur eggs
Roy Chapman Andrews came from humble beginnings. He worked in the American Museum of Natural History, sweeping and scrubbing floors. Although taxidermy was his hobby, he never would have dreamed of eventually becoming director of the museum and leading expeditions to uncharted corners of the world.
He worked his way up and became the first person to lead a paleontological expedition into Mongolia’s Gobi Desert in 1920, where he found various dinosaur fossils. In 1923, he found the eggshells of oviraptor eggs, the first dinosaur eggs ever discovered. He was one of several inspirations for Indiana Jones.
71. Kazimierz Nowak
Specialty: Travel reporting, photography, cycling
Best known for: Traveling Africa
In the 1920s, Kazimierz Nowak lost his accounting job. Instead of looking for another, he decided to try something more unconventional. His new full-time job consisted of traveling on his bike and reporting what he saw. He cycled extensively through Europe and North Africa.
In the 1930s, he traveled Africa only by foot, bicycle, horse, camel, and boat. He refused luxurious modes of transport, even choosing to take his bike through sand dunes. His fascinating tales, photography, and insights into local cultures made him one of the greatest travel reporters of his time.
72. Duke of Abruzzi
Specialty: Mountaineering
Best known for: The first ascent of Mount St. Elias, 1909 K2 attempt
The Duke of Abruzzi, Luigi Amadeo Giuseppe Maria Ferdinando Francesco, was born into a life of luxury but felt called to another. He traveled extensively for political purposes but could not ignore his desire to explore beyond the comfortable realm of the aristocracy. Abruzzi joined the Italian navy at just 11 years old.
He first became interested in climbing in the Italian Alps. The Duke climbed the Matterhorn via the infamously difficult Zmult Ridge at 21 and gained fame by making the first ascent of Mount St. Elias. He was also the first to explore the summits of the 16 mountains in the Ruwenzori Range. However, his magnum opus is his pioneering climb of K2 in 1909, which explored various routes, including what is now known as the Abruzzi Ridge.
73. Galen Rowell
Specialty: climber, photojournalist
Best known for: First ascents and unique photos
In 1977, Galen Rowell, together with John Roskelley, Kim Schmitz, and Dennis Hennek, made the first ascent of the Great Trango Tower (6,286m, Karakoram).
Rowell also made the first one-day ascent of Denali in 1978, with Ned Gillette.
His firsts don't stop there. He made the first one-day ascent of Kilimanjaro (5,895m), the first ascent of Cholatse (6,440m in the Himalaya), Denali’s first ski circumnavigation, and various first ascents in the Karakoram, Alaska, the Andes, and the Sierra Nevada.
He pioneered a new type of photography in which he considered the landscape as part of the adventure and the adventure as part of the landscape. “My first thought is always of light,” he said.
His 1986 book Mountain Light: In Search of the Dynamic Landscape is one of the best-selling photography books ever. At a time when photographers hid their locations and their techniques, Rowell shared openly.
74. Maurice Herzog
Specialty: Mountaineering
Best known for: The first ascent of an 8,000m peak
French climber Maurice Herzog was a hero for most of his life, though in later years his relationship with the truth has somewhat sullied his name. Herzog was considered to be a reasonable amateur mountaineer in France, but not a leading light like Rebuffat or Terray. Despite this, he was appointed as leader of the 1950 Annapurna expedition.
Although not the finest climber, Herzog nonetheless performed strongly on Annapurna. With Louis Lachenal he reached the summit on June 3, 1950. In doing so, he and Lachenal were the first people to set foot atop an 8,000m peak. However, the descent was an unqualified disaster.
Lachenal lost all of his toes to frostbite, Herzog both his toes and his fingers. While recovering Herzog wrote the best-selling expedition book of all time, although later re-examination of his account found Herzog to be a little loose with the truth and something of a glory hunter at the expense of others.
Herzog went on to become the French Minister of Youth and Sport and mayor of Chamonix-Mont-Blanc. He was also a member of the International Olympic Committee for 25 years.
75. Louise Boyd
Specialty: Arctic exploration
Best known for: Documenting uncharted parts of the Arctic
A wealthy heiress, Louise Boyd used her inheritance to fund critical expeditions for the U.S. government. She supported search efforts for missing explorer Roald Amundsen and documented unchartered parts of the Arctic. The aerial mapping camera she used to record Greenland’s topography contributed to new, detailed maps of the area that are still widely used today.
Boyd is best remembered for her final expedition, during which she became the first woman to fly over the North Pole. The 1955 flight took Boyd 16 hours. She was 68 years old.
76. Casimiro Ferrari
Specialty: Alpinism, big-wall climbing
Best known for: Cerro Torre
He grew up surrounded by mountain beauty (and enough rock walls to fill a climbers' life) on the shores of Lake Como. Ferrari was one of the elite Italian climbers grouped into the famous mountain club Le Ragni di Lecco (Lecco's Spiders). He had a promising career as a factory owner, a loving wife...but he gave them all up for the hostile weather, wild nature, and sharp spires of Patagonia. "The Italian Condor", as Argentinians called him, fell in love with Patagonia at first sight. He made the second ascent, after Maestri's compressor route, on Cerro Torre. Then came the east face of Fitz Roy, and some years later, Cerro Murallon.
Ferrari eventually built a house at the shore Viedma, 90km from El Chalten, overlooking the Fitz Roy massif. He never left until his death in 2001. His wife divorced him and he became a sort of hermit, exploring and climbing. His last route was on Aguja Mermoz in 1994, after a tumor diagnosis.
77. Antoine de St-Exupery
Specialty: Aviation and literature
Best known for: Writing The Little Prince, airmail pioneer, disappearing
It is hard to put Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in a single box. The Frenchman was both a gifted aviator and an exceptional writer. He joined the French Air Force in the early 1920s but took a brief respite after crashing several times. Despite this, he was persistent in fulfilling his dream and got back into the game as a commercial pilot delivering airmail, a new concept at the time.
He enjoyed writing about his aviation experiences and these completely different disciplines overlapped. He transmitted his passion into one of the world’s most famous works of literature, The Little Prince. Two of his aviation books, Wind, Sand and Stars and Night Flight, are exquisite true-life adventure accounts.
In 1944, de Saint-Exupéry vanished during a reconnaissance flight over the Rhone Valley.
78. Sylvia Earle
Specialty: Marine protection
Best known for: Researching oil spill ocean damage
Scientist and marine biologist Sylvia Earle’s contribution to the ocean spans a 50-year career. Among Earle’s notable feats is her research on the environmental damage caused by Iraq's destruction of Kuwaiti oil wells during the Gulf War.
Earle founded a company tasked with advancing marine engineering; just one of many initiatives she worked on that aimed to create a sustainable marine environment.
Her 1979 untethered, open-ocean, JIM suit (an atmospheric diving suit) dive to the ocean floor set the women's depth record at 381m. Her record is yet to be broken.
79. Alison Hargreaves
Specialty: Alpinism, high-altitude mountaineering
Best known for: First female solo ascent of Everest
British climber Alison Hargreaves is known as much for her death as her achievements in life. A pioneering female climber and mountaineer in the 1980s and 1990s, Hargreaves came to wider attention when she soloed variations of the six great North Faces of the Alps in a single season in 1993.
Fiercely ambitious, Hargreaves wanted to push her limits in the Greater Ranges. In 1995, she became the first woman to solo climb Everest, all without Sherpa support or oxygen. Sadly, Hargreaves was cut down in her prime, killed by a storm on K2 a few months later. Continuing the family tradition, son Tom Ballard went on to become the first person to solo climb the six great North Faces of the Alps in a single winter. In a cruel twist, he died on Nanga Parbat in 2019.
80. Anders Svedlund
Specialty: Ocean rowing
Best known for: First to row the Pacific and Indian Ocean solo
Swedish-born Anders Svedlund was always getting lost in his thoughts. He enjoyed solitude and contemplation so much that he decided to row whole oceans completely unassisted. This included shunning navigational equipment.
He completed the first-ever row of the Indian Ocean in 1971 (64 days), then the Pacific in 1974 (191 days). He was also notoriously secretive: He didn't tell a soul about his great achievements at first, but his fame eventually spread.
81. Jack Sheppard
Specialty: Cave diving
Best known for: Pioneering cave diving in the United Kingdom
Caving was not really a thing in the 1930s. Jack Sheppard decided to change that. His desire to explore subterranean worlds was more than a hobby, it was a calling.
Sheppard had to start from scratch. There was no protective, oxygenated equipment, so he designed and built a suit of his own. It was a lesson in trial and error, with several failed attempts. In 1935 and 1936, he conducted successful dives in Wookey Hole and Swildon’s Hole in Somerset. He is credited for creating the first underwater equipment for this unique pastime.
82. Dervla Murphy
Specialty: Travel writing
Best known for: Cycling overland from Dunkirk to Delhi
In 1963, Dervla Murphy cycled from Dunkirk to Delhi. On a basic second-hand bicycle designed for short city rides, Murphy traveled through Afghanistan and Iran, despite political unrest. She withstood the coldest European winter on record and fended off wolves with a pistol.
The one-of-a-kind Irish woman forged an illustrious travel writing career through such adventures. The first of her 26 titles, Full Tilt: Ireland to India With a Bicycle, details her first big ride. Eight Feet in the Andes tells of a mule journey with her seven-year-old daughter.
83. Rick Stanton
Specialty: Cave diving, rescue
Best known for: Tham Luang cave rescue
A former firefighter, Rick Stanton is a prolific explorer of caves. This prompted him to combine his former job and his passion, creating a new role for himself: a cave rescue diver.
He used his skills to conduct rescue operations, notably during the Tham Luang rescue in 2018. He also rescued six British nationals trapped in a cave in Mexico.
In 2010, he and three others penetrated a record 8,800m into the Pozo Azul cave system in Spain.
84. Paul Caffyn
Specialty: Sea kayaking
Best known for: Australia circumnavigation
In 1982, Australian sea kayaker Paul Caffyn completed one of the world’s most remarkable paddles. Caffyn had already paddled around New Zealand and Britain. Then, when a jovial conversation between friends broached the unfathomable circumnavigation of Australia, he found a new goal.
Australia took Caffyn one year to paddle. He was the first to complete the journey. Of the 15,000km expedition, the menacing Zuytdorp Cliffs were the crux. He stayed awake for 36 hours during this arduous section, completing the journey and cementing his place in history.
85. Hannes Lindemann
Specialty: Sea kayaking
Best known for: Solo, unsupported transatlantic crossings
Sportspeople are often motivated by learning precisely how far they can push their body. For Hannes Lindemann, this meant two unsupported, solo transatlantic crossings, one by canoe and one by kayak.
During his 1955, 65-day crossing, Lindemann discovered that the “mind collapses before the body does”. He suffered severe fatigue, sleep deprivation, and altered states. To assist his second crossing, he trained himself in sleep deprivation and practiced meditation and prayer. Lindemann wrote about his two crossings in his book, Alone at Sea.
86. Franz Romer
Specialty: Sea kayaking
Best known for: First person to kayak solo from Europe to the Americas
Way back in 1928, a visionary Franz Romer set off to become the first person to kayak alone from Europe to the Americas. He didn’t know how to swim and only took a sextant, compass, binoculars, and a barometer. Among his miseries, he went five days without sleep and suffered blistering sunburn. Navigating mostly by the stars, Romer averaged 55km per day in his six-metre wood-framed Klepper kayak. He completed the pioneering crossing in 58 days.
87. Katia and Maurice Krafft
Specialty: Volcanos
Best known for: Exquisite volcano footage; dying during an eruption
Katia and Maurice Krafft were connected by a mutual passion for volcanos. During the 1970s, their work proved instrumental in improving our understanding of volcanism.
The couple was often the first to arrive at an eruption. Katia photographed while Maurice filmed. Fearless, Katia often ventured dangerously close to the rim. She obtained measurements, gas samples, and mineral readings that enabled a greater understanding of when and how eruptions occur. For her work, she received many awards.
In 1991, the couple's luck ran out. While filming Mount Unzen’s eruption in Japan, they were caught in a pyroclastic flow, a dense, fast-moving cloud of lava pieces, hot ash, and scalding gas. They died instantly. Filmmaker Werner Herzog used some of the couple's astonishingly intimate volcano footage in his documentary, Into the Volcano. The video clips include Katia, in what looks like a tinfoil suit, standing within an arm's length of a river of molten lava.
88. Jane Goodall
Specialty: Chimpanzees
Best known for: Researching chimpanzees' close relationship with humans
During the 1960s, 26-year-old Jane Goodall took a ground-breaking journey into the wild. Based in Gombe, Tanzania, Goodall developed a rare connection with chimpanzees. She formed trusting relationships with our nearest primate relatives by immersing herself in their natural environment. She recognized that chimpanzees exhibit similar traits to humans, including tool use and forming long-term bonds.
Goodall became influential on a global scale and is arguably the world's most famous scientist. Devoting her life to the plight of chimpanzees, Goodall established The Jane Goodall Institute in 1977.
89. Felix Baumgartner
Specialty: Skydiving
Best known for: Skydiving from the edge of space
In 2012, Felix Baumgartner opened the door of a cabin suspended from a helium balloon 39km above the earth’s surface. Then he stepped off into thin air.
The harrowing video documents the Red Bull Stratos project, which successfully sought to break skydiving world records. The stratosphere is not technically outer space, yet in the video, the resemblance between Baumgartner’s craft and the escape pods from 2001: A Space Odyssey is uncanny. He simply exits onto the little doorstep, offers a salute, then steps out into the blackness.
Baumgartner disappears in the cabin-mounted camera — fast. He hit a top speed of 1,357.64kph, at the time the highest and fastest skydive ever executed.
Since becoming the first human to break the sound barrier outside a vehicle, the Austrian has made headlines with some controversial statements.
90. Brian Jones and Bertrand Piccard
Specialty: Ballooning
Best known for: First to circumnavigate the world in a balloon
Ever since Jules Verne, adventurers have dreamed of circumnavigating the world by balloon. But it is a lot harder than it sounds, and it wasn't until 1999 that Brian Jones of the UK and Bertrand Piccard of Switzerland succeeded.
Their balloon was not a simple affair with a blowtorch and a wicker basket. It was a hot-air craft made of carbon and kevlar. It combined a helium inner cell with an outer hot-air balloon. They had six propane burners and a pressurized cabin -- necessary, since they flew at an altitude even higher than most jets, nearly 12,000m.
Sometimes they crept along, sometimes they caught the jet stream and flew at almost 300kph. Often they worried about storms, or whether their titanium propane tanks would suffice for the entire trip. Ultimately, they did. After 20 days, a long-imagined dream of human exploration became reality.
91. Freya Hoffmeister
Specialty: Sea kayaking
Best known for: Several mega-circumnavigations, including South America and Australia
A born athlete, Freya Hoffmeister competed in gymnastics until she got too tall for the sport. She then shifted to skeet shooting and later skydiving. After 1,500 jumps, including the first tandem jump onto the North Pole, she took up sea kayaking.
Soon, she started circumnavigating landmasses, sometimes alone. She has since recorded the fastest-ever paddle around Iceland, circumnavigated New Zealand solo and unassisted, become the second kayaker to circle Australia, and the first to paddle around South America.
The book Fearless: One Woman, One Kayak, One Continent documents her Australian trip. She celebrated her 50th birthday in Buenos Aires after finishing the South America trip on May 10, 2014.
Currently, Hoffmeister is trying to circumnavigate North America. The task will require 50,000 kilometres in the kayak, and take eight to ten years to complete. She started in 2017.
92. Scott Lindgren
Specialty: Expedition whitewater kayaking
Best known for: Being the best kayaker of a generation
During the 1990s, Scott Lindgren lit up the whitewater kayaking world with wild first descents all over the world. His characteristic edge propelled him through burly first descents in North America, Africa, and Asia. He and his crew captured a lot of it on VHS, producing gritty short films that inspired a generation.
Before all that, he grew up rough and poor in the San Bernadino Valley of California. The resulting trauma took its toll but also drove him through his intense life. Motivated to send harder and harder rapids, Lindgren simultaneously struggled with where to draw the line. Eventually, substance abuse problems wreaked havoc on his career and a brain tumor almost killed him.
The River Runner, released in August on Netflix, chronicles Lindgren’s odyssey through kayaking, inspiration, and personal turmoil. It also follows his mission to paddle the Himalaya’s four biggest rivers, which flow from Mt. Kailash. Now 49, he still paddles at a high level.
93. Ricardo Cassin
Specialty: Alpinist
Best known for: Lecco's Spiders
An Italian legend, Cassin started working at a very young age, after his father's death. Cassin began climbing with the Ragni di Lecco, a prestigious group of Italian alpinists, and opened his first routes at the tender age of 22. His long career was full of difficult routes and first ascents, including the North Face of Cime Ovest di Lavaredo in the Dolomites.
In 1937, Cassin led the first ascent of Via Cassin, the Northeast Face of Piz Badile, with Vittorio Ratti and Gino Esposito. One year later, Cassin, Esposito, and Ugo Tizzoni climbed the Walker Spur on the North Face of Grandes Jorasses. Cassin also opened the most technical route on Denali at the time (1961), now appropriately named the Cassin Ridge. In 1958, he led an expedition to Gasherbrum IV, where Walter Bonatti and Carlo Mauri made the first ascent.
Cassin lived to 100 and climbed until the age of 80.
94. Ben Stookesberry
Specialty: Expedition whitewater kayaking
Best known for: Cutting-edge kayaking worldwide
Ben Stookesberry’s kayaking resumé would overflow most river runners’ bucket lists. In his career, he has initiated over 132 first descents on sections of Class V or Class VI rivers in 36 countries. He has taken on difficult missions in Central Africa, Pakistan, Patagonia, and Bhutan.
Stookesberry gravitates toward big projects. On his and frequent teammate Chris Korbulic’s first descent trip to Papua New Guinea, they spent 13 days running 13 gorges on the remote Beriman River. In Norway’s Svalbard Archipelago, Stookesberry ran a 65-foot glacial waterfall into the Arctic Ocean.
His efforts have earned him prestige: the Papua New Guinea expedition landed him and his partners National Geographic Adventure Hero of the Year status in 2007. In 2020, Stookesberry teamed up with Korbulic again to win Whitewater Awards’ Expedition of the Year for their first descent of the Noeick River in British Columbia.
95. Heinrich Harrer
Specialty: Climbing
Best known for: Eiger North Face, Nanga Parbat, Seven Years in Tibet
Many picture the Austrian explorer with the face of Brad Pitt. The movie Seven Years in Tibet revived interest in Harrar, despite old reports of his involvement in the Nazi party. His reputation was later cleared, thanks to the support of no less than Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal.
Harrer's life, with his lights and shadows, is worth a movie, or a whole series. With Fritz Kasparek, he was one of four climbers who completed the ascent of the North Face of the Eiger in the Swiss Alps. He later recounted the story in one of the best mountaineering books ever written, The White Spider.
Harrer took part in a reconnaissance expedition to Nanga Parbat. On the way back, he British soldiers took him prisoner. After several attempts, he managed to escape the camp, made it to Tibet, met the Dalai Lama, and as the movie title suggests, spent seven years there.
Back in Europe, he cultivated a life of travel, writing, exploration, and climbing, until his death at 93.
96. Wojciech (Voytek) Kurtyka
Specialty: Alpine style, high-altitude climbing
Best known for: Gasherbrum IV's Shining Wall
Kurtyka was one of the great Polish trailblazers who stunned the world with their endurance in extreme conditions and their capacity for suffering. He went one step beyond in his search for alpine-style purity and commitment.
Kurtyka progressed from the Tatras to Norway's Troll Wall, to the Hindu Kush, and then to the Himalaya. He had the best climbers of the time at the end of his rope and was a faithful follower of the pure alpine style. His best-known climb, (among the 10 best of the 20th century, according to Climbing Magazine), was the line opened with Robert Schauer on the West Face of Gasherbrum IV, known as the Shining Wall. You can read the full story of that epic climb here.
97. Peter Knowles
Specialty: Expedition whitewater kayaking
Best known for: Whitewater stewardship and guidebooks in the Himalaya
Among whitewater kayakers, Peter Knowles is known for his dirtbag expedition style. While many of his trips resulted in first descents, his approach emphasized finding unique objectives to tackle unsupported.
From the 1980s to the 2000s, Knowles developed a reputation as a kayaking ambassador. On his team-oriented expeditions, he often went out of his way to involve locals. His career spanned over 50 expeditions in the Himalaya, Turkey, Europe, and Mexico.
Knowles also gained lasting notoriety for his guidebooks to areas like Nepal and the European Alps. Many still set the standard for the areas they describe, offering voluminous critical information as well as amusing anecdotes and drawings. He’s seen as one of the progenitors of a growing whitewater tourism industry in Nepal, Bhutan, and India.
98. Howard Carter
Specialty: Archaeology
Best known for: Discovering King Tut's tomb
Carter's interest in ancient Egypt started early on when his father painted a portrait of a well-known Egyptologist. Following in his father's footsteps, Carter, too, became an artist.
Through family connections, Carter took a job making drawings for an archaeologist working at a site in Egypt. In 1891, the 17-year-old Carter arrived in Beni Hassan to begin work as they excavated tombs of the Middle Kingdom. There, he built a reputation as an innovator, using new methods to draw wall reliefs.
By 1914, he was leading the dig at what was thought to be King Tutankhamen's burial site. World War I soon suspended operations, but Carter's team resumed work after the war.
On November 4, 1922, a boy laborer who worked on the crew started to dig in the sand with a stick. Finding something odd, he called Carter over. The crew then unearthed a flight of steps that led down to a sealed door and a secret chamber. On November 26 the team breached the tomb, finding a massive array of gold and treasures inside. On February 16, 1923, Carter opened the tomb's final, innermost chamber and found the sarcophagus of King Tut.
Carter remained on site until the excavation concluded in 1932. Bucking the supernatural rumor that the tomb was somehow cursed, he lived until 1939.
99. Fyodor Konyukhov
Specialty: Everything
Best known for: The world’s most prolific and versatile explorer
To date, the nonstop Russian adventurer has completed more than 50 expeditions: sailing, trekking, rowing, climbing, sledding, cycling, skiing, hot-air ballooning, rafting, and expeditions by camel, horse, sled dog, and four-wheel-drive. We might have missed some.
In the 2000s, Konyukhov sailed 5,500km across the Atlantic in a tiny seven-metre boat, circumnavigated Antarctica by boat in 102 days, completed the first solo non-stop row of the Pacific from East to West (17,408km), and rowed 10,000km across the South Pacific.
Oceans are just part of it, though. He made a solo, non-stop, round-the-world balloon flight in 2016 (in a record 11 days 4 hours 20 minutes) and he is the first Russian to complete the Seven Summits. Konyukhov is also the only person to have reached the five extreme Poles: the North Pole (three times), the South Pole, the Pole of Inaccessibility in the Arctic Ocean, Mount Everest (the alpinist’s Pole), and the Yachtsman’s Pole at Cape Horn (four times).
To top it all off, Konyukhov is an ordained Orthodox priest. And an artist. We don't know where he finds the time.
100. Zhao Kangmin
Specialty: Archaeology
Best known for: Discovering the terracotta warriors of the Qin dynasty
In 1974, Zhao Kangmin got a phone call from the Yanzhai Commune in Lintong, China. It seemed that people had accidentally unearthed fragments of ancient statues. Unsure what they were, people either threw them away, repurposed them, or gave them to children as toys.
Zhao thought that the traces might be significant. Since 1961, he had led the cultural relics and archaeology department at the Lintong County Cultural Center. Near the ancient capital of Xi’an, the area was rich with archaeological sites. Zhao himself had dug up three life-size statues of kneeling crossbowmen in 1962.
Arranging the logistics for a new investigation might be tricky. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong had ordered Red Guard soldiers to destroy a similar Qin dynasty statue and forced Zhao to publicly disgrace himself for “encouraging feudalism”.
So surreptitiously, Zhao went to the Yanzhai Commune and began the excavation. Gathering any fragments he could find, he painstakingly reconstructed several more “terracotta warriors” and displayed them at the Cultural Center. Soon, a visiting reporter saw the statues and publicized the finding on his return to Beijing.
The Cultural Revolution was not yet over, and Zhao feared the government would destroy the statues again. Instead, they funded a full excavation. Under Zhao’s leadership, archaeologists unearthed over 500 terracotta warriors within months. The site is now world famous.
“I don’t want petty self-expression...I want the rhythm of eternity,” Rockwell Kent once said about his life. And so he lived.
Kent expressed himself in a profoundly multidimensional manner. Not only famed as an artist, Kent was an explorer, survivalist, architect, leader, and entrepreneur. On his death, The New York Times wrote: "He is so multiple a person as to be multifarious."
Adventure and art
Between 1920 and 1930 Kent wrote three adventure books: N by E, Wilderness, and Voyaging Southward from the Strait of Magellan. His artistic mindset portrayed his voyages in unusual and creative ways. More than adventure, they are also portraits of the psyche, and of humanity.
Kent’s voyages shaped his art and vice versa. Authentic first-hand experiences reinforced new creative avenues. Many of his paintings and drawings became icons that continue to inspire artists and explorers. I believe their power lies in the feeling and presence of the Arctic. Kent captures the mood of the landscape, lit by the polar light, extraordinarily faithfully. Artists such as Fyodor Konyukhov have continued Kent's style. “Rockwell Kent inspired my life,” Konyukhov told me.
Kent expanded his interest, from purely artistic, to exploration, survivalism, and sailing. This call to adventure in turn initiated his quest for manhood. In his memoirs, he wrote of the strong arms and physical presence of the fishermen he saw while painting on the shore of the Dublin Pond. He wrote that he would like to earn some of this physical rooting himself.
So his journey began. It was built on self-made houses, dance floors, and boats. He sailed as far north as Alaska and Greenland, and as far south as the Strait of Magellan. With almost every journey, he built a new house.
His "cursed libido"
Greenlandic society was a utopian model of his socialist ideals. It fit his political beliefs, his artistic spirit, and what he called his “cursed libido.” Raised in a traditional society, he reflected upon his experience of indigenous openness and physical intimacy: “What we stigmatize as fornication and adultery is for them a natural pastime, spiced by being slightly wicked.”
He called Greenlanders, “the most friendly, loving, kind, and filthy, dirty people in the world,” and he enjoyed living as a Greenlander as he defined it. Kent doesn’t elaborate, but I saw more tolerance for LGBT minorities in Greenland 13 years ago than I have seen anywhere else in the world. Tolerance and openness in those small towns seem deep-rooted.
According to his journal, Kent's promiscuity in Greenland was only surpassed by German actress Leni Riefenstahl. Riefenstahl's arrival in Greenland coincided with the celebration of Kent's fiftieth birthday, for which he built a dance floor. According to Kent, Riefenstahl had so many visitors to her tent that the Greenlanders called her "the mattress".
Work and play
During Kent's three visits between 1929 and 1935, a splendid collection of art emerged. One of the most notable titles was Salamina, which depicted his time with a woman of that name, along with other local women.
Though many polar explorers cohabited with Inuit women, he was the only one who dared go into detail. To an American audience, the book was odd, but the writing never violated or trespassed the boundaries of Greenlanders' sense of decency. That was the only behavioral savoir-vivre that Kent cared to obey.
In Greenland, he worked for about 14 hours each day. He built houses, created art, bred dogs, hunted, and contributed to the life of the small settlement of Igdlorssuit. The Greenlanders adored him. On his departure, they gathered on the shore and sang a farewell hymn. He responded: “Farewell Igdlorssuit, as though to life.”
Persecution in the United States
As an entrepreneur back in New York state, Kent used Nordic names for his enterprises. So he named his dairy farm Aasgard, the home of the Nordic Gods. He spent most of his time there, running the farm and creating art. He hosted meetings for the intellectual elite in the evenings but rose early each morning to start work at 6 am.
Politics and socialism remained important to Kent and he found ways to work his beliefs into his work. The Canadian-Icelandic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefanson noticed that Kent had left a cryptic message in Inuktitut on a mural commissioned by the United States government. It called for the Puerto Ricans to change chiefs and free themselves.
For this, and many other socialist actions and affiliations, he was often persecuted by the American government. It deemed his books Communist and subversive. If found, they burnt his books. This persecution dented his popularity and led to financial problems.
An imitator of himself
Despite these hardships, he never stopped creating. Toward the end of his life, he tried to start again under another name, only to be labeled an imitator of Rockwell Kent. “Being an imitator, even of oneself, is despicable,” he responded.
His artistic career culminated with a major exhibition in Moscow. It was the first solo show by an American artist in the Soviet Union and Kent's final exhibition. This is where his artwork remains. He left a legacy of hundreds of works, from drawings and paintings to murals and sculptures. However, he is best remembered for his early illustrations of Moby Dick.
I see a great deal of William Blake in Kent's art. The same highly charged body shapes, with an aura of mysticism, though Kent topped it off with elements of socialist realism on many occasions. Both Blake and Kent sought to recover their physicality, and I think this quest defined them as much as their art.
Before his death, Kent said: “I got all I could get out of life. All I want? No…I want it all. Don’t you?”
The almanacs of climbing history prefer not to include it. The lists of ascents prefer not to list it. This is the story of Cho Oyu in 1964 and the Stammberger case.
Cho Oyu and its third ascent
Cho Oyu is 8,201m high and is the sixth highest mountain on Earth. The "Turquoise Goddess" of the Himalaya is 20km west of Everest, on the border between China and Nepal. An Austrian expedition first climbed it in 1954.
On April 4, 1964, an expedition from West Germany arrived at Cho Oyu Base Camp. The team included Sepp Gschwendtner, Georg Huber, Friedrich Ludwig (Fritz) Stammberger, Dr. Alois Thurmayr, Dawa Tenzing Sherpa, Phu Dorje II, Aila and Lhakpa Norbu Sherpas. Rudi Rott was the leader.
After acclimatizing, they established Camp 1 at 6,300m on April 16. After three days of rest, they continued to Camp 2 at 6,450m. Two of the Sherpas turned around, one because of pneumonia, and the other because of altitude sickness. Rott didn't climb.
On April 22, the team reached Camp 3 through a vertical section of dangerous ice. The German climbers carried their skis and their backpacks with the intention of skiing from the top. Thurmayr panicked upon seeing the ice wall, and Phu Dorje became very nervous as well.
The next day, they reached 7,200m, where they established their Camp 4 and rested.
The summit push
On April 25 at 9 am, they began their summit push. Thurmayr and Huber climbed very slowly, Stammberger and Phu Dorje II were ahead. All four were in their twenties. None of them used bottled O2.
Stammberger and Phu Dorje II made it to 50m below the main summit. Phu Dorje stayed there, but Stammberger decided to climb to the main summit. He was going to ski down from the top. Eventually, he left his skis behind but still climbed in his ski boots. At 5 pm, he topped out.
Descending to 7,500m, he found Huber and Thurmayr, who were going to bivouac so that they could summit the next day. Night fell and the temperature plummeted, so they decided to go together to Camp 4. It was then that Thurmayr started showing clear symptoms of altitude sickness.
On April 26, they all spent the day sleeping in Camp 4. Thurmayr's condition began to deteriorate and Huber started to feel ill too. The group had already been on the mountain for 12 days. To make matters worse, their fuel ran out and they couldn't melt snow for drinking water.
No gas, no water, and altitude sickness
On April 27, any hope the rest of the group had of summiting had vanished. Phu Dorje started to descend to Base Camp to get more gas and some food. On April 28, the rest wanted to go down but the situation became complicated. Thurmayr could not stand up, and the altitude sickness made him violent.
Stammberger put on his skis, and at 11 am, he started to ski down for help. He was exhausted and dehydrated. Despite this, he descended from 7,200m to 6,400m in just 25 minutes. Between Camp 1 and Camp 2, he found some liquid and drank it, but it later turned out to be toxic, containing gasoline.
He arrived at Base Camp at midnight, but the next day he felt sick and was ill for the next three days.
Too late
Team members in Base Camp had trouble getting to Camp 4. It wasn't until May 6 that Stammberger, Dawa Tenzing, and Phu Dorje finally made it up. Unfortunately, Huber had already been dead for two days and Thurmayr perished during the rescue.
An impressive, light ascent of Cho Oyu, and what was then the highest ski descent in the world, was overshadowed by the failed rescue. Controversy surrounded the expedition, and specifically Fritz Stammberger. Some held him responsible for the deaths of his two companions. They blamed him for not acting assertively at Camp 4, with two sick climbers who insisted on trying to reach the top.
Some people did not accept his summit either, citing a lack of reliable evidence. They criticized his summit photos that appear to show that the ski pole (that served as a flagpole at the top) was apparently on the western slope of the mountain and that in the image the sun was still very high, suggesting that he had taken it around 2 or 2:30 pm rather than his claimed 5 pm.
A success?
The Himalayan Database rated the ascent as "Success (Claimed)". However, the American Alpine Club published an article about the successful ascent in 1965. Later, Phu Dorje Sherpa claimed that he had also climbed with Stammberger to the top.
The Himalayan Database includes the opinion of Reinhold Messner, who in 1986 said that Fritz Stammberger did not climb Cho Oyu in 1964. Messner voiced his opinion again in his book Cho Oyu - Gottin des Turkis.
But why wouldn't he climb the last 50 metres to the top? The climb remains unresolved in mountaineering circles.
Mountaineering historians have largely ignored Stammberger's climb. The first high-altitude ski descent (or attempted descent) on an 8,000'er is usually listed as the 1980 Everest ski by Japanese climber Yuichiro Miura. Regarding Cho Oyu, most sources point to Veronique Perillat in 1988 on a single ski, from the top to Camp 1. Stammberger barely ever gets mentioned, despite his ski descent from 7,200m to Base Camp.
After Cho Oyu
As a skier and climber, Fritz Stammberger was well ahead of his time. Born in 1940 in Germany, he witnessed as a child the bombing of his home and the death of his mother.
In 1963, he emigrated to Aspen, Colorado, but kept his West German citizenship. He founded a printing press and worked as a ski instructor.
After Cho Oyu, he continued to climb and ski. In the second half of the 1960s, he made numerous ascents and ski descents on the most demanding mountains in the U.S. He was an environmentalist, he opposed tobacco advertising, and his passions included reading and solo climbing.
In autumn 1974, he led a mixed-nationality team to climb the South Face of Makalu. At 7,800m, bad weather forced them to turn around.
Tirich Mir
In 1975, he attempted the Pakistani peak Tirich Mir (7,690m) for the third time. Stammberger went alone. He had two previous attempts on this mountain: one in 1962, also solo, when at 6,100m he was swept down by an avalanche and was lucky to survive. Then another failed attempt in 1974.
On this third attempt, he disappeared completely.
After his disappearance, it was rumored that he was a spy, helping to establish secret stations on the mountain.
Two friends went to look for him, but they only found a backpack containing a map, a couple of books, and rather strangely, an electric heating pad. They went up as high as they could in a helicopter and spotted some footprints but nothing else.
A double life
His wife Janice Pennington, a model on the American television game show The Price Is Right, continued to investigate his death until 1992. She spoke to members of the U.S. and Soviet secret service on multiple occasions, even traveling to meet them.
She eventually discovered that the CIA had recruited Stammberger in 1974. His task was to collect information and help organize bases in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Pennington obtained a classified report that revealed that Stammberger was involved with the mujahideen who were fighting against the Soviet Union and that he died in the early 1980s on Afghan soil, not far from Tirich Mir. She published her findings in the book Husband, Lover, Spy.
Some of Stammberger's friends, including Michael Ohnmacht, think that Stammberger had an accident on Tirich Mir and was not a spy. Others speculate that the region was very dangerous at the time and that he could have been murdered. Pennington later discovered that Stammberger did not have a permit for Tirich Mir in 1975.
The mystery remains unresolved.
Women make up less than 2% of all mountain guides certified by the International Federation of Mountain Guides Association (IFMGA). Here, we examine the gender disparity, talk about what it takes to attain this highest guide certification, and briefly profile some prominent female mountain guides.
What is the IFMGA?
The IFMGA was founded in 1965 by several mountain guides organizations from various Alps nations. As of 2021, the IFMGA oversees guiding standards for its 26 member associations, encompassing more than 20 countries.
IFMGA mountain guides have attained the highest professional credentials, and the prestigious IFMGA pin is given to those certified as Rock, Alpine, and Ski Mountaineering Guides. For that reason, mountain guides can "work in any type of terrain, anywhere" in any of the IFMGA's member countries.
The IFMGA gender gap
Although female mountain guides are common in some parts of the world — the Alps and Canada, for example — overall, the ratio of female-to-male IFMGA-certified guides stands out from almost any other vocation. Estimates from 2018 indicate that just 1.5% of all IFMGA Mountain Guides are women. That percentage gets substantially slimmer in areas like Nepal and Latin America. The United States is also stunningly short on female guides, with a headcount of around 12-15.
Social and cultural barriers are the primary cause of such a low female IFMGA turnout. After all, some of the world's best and most encroached high-altitude peaks rest near extremely "traditional" settlements. Here, women rarely stray from their traditional domestic roles.
Becoming an IFMGA mountain guide
IFMGA programs are conducted around the world by member associations. Often referred to as the Ph.D. of mountaineering, IFMGA training takes at least five years and $30,000 to complete. To even qualify for enrollment in the proper IFMGA course, applicants must have four nontechnical, sub-7,000m treks and at least one successful ascent of a peak above 7,000m.
Once enrolled in the program, candidates must pass three-month guiding exams in the field and a 21-day test in which they must guide a client on an alpine trek.
Prominent female IFMGA mountain guides
Angela Hawse: AMGA President & 6th-ever female IFMGA guide
Angela Hawse became the sixth female IFMGA mountain guide globally and only the third in the U.S. For many years, Hawse has led the American Mountain Guides Association (AMGA) in a significant capacity — first as director, then V.P., and today, as president.
She also co-founded Chicks Climbing and Skiing, a women-led, female-focused outfitter.
In her long career, Hawse has led expeditions to Denali, Carstensz Pyramid, Ama Dablam (6,120m), Everest, Aconcagua, and Pakistan. She also executed a self-supported, 26-day ski traverse from Sweden to Norway. Hawse has deep experience in sport, trad, alpine, ice, big wall, and mountaineering disciplines.
Notably, her Ama Dablam expedition was all-female and raised $23,000 for the dZi Foundation, a women's organization in the region.
Juliana Garcia – 1st female Latin American IFMGA guide
In 2017, Ecuadorean Juliana Garcia became the first IFMGA-certified female mountain guide in Latin America.
Even earlier, in 2015, Garcia was president of the Ecuadorean Mountain Guide Association. She now sits on the IFMGA's Board of Directors, the first woman to serve as a board member. Garcia and Angela Hawse (AMGA) are the only two women in the world at the helm of a mountain guide association.
Garcia is known for establishing high-altitude routes alpine-style, including H.K. on the eastern Huandoy in the Peruvian Andes in 2021, for which she and Joshua Jarrin received a Piolet d'Or nomination. In 2016, Garcia and climber Anna Pfaff established The Solstice Route on Bolivia's Tiquimani (5,551m) and attempted Gasherbrum II (8,034m) in Pakistan, one of the tallest peaks in the world.
Dawa Yangzum Sherpa – 1st Asian female IFMGA guide
Nepalese mountain guide Dawa Yangzum Sherpa received her IFMGA certification in 2018 at the age of 27, making her one of the youngest female mountain guides in the world.
By that time, Yangzum had already summited Everest at just 21 years old. She has also summited Yala Peak, Island Peak, Ama Dablam (6,120m), Annapurna 1, and K2. She owns the first ascent of Chekigo Peak, also in the Himalaya. Finally, Yangzum remains the youngest woman ever to have climbed K2. In 2019, she clinched the speed record on Makalu, taking just 20 hours from Base Camp and back without supplemental O2.
In April 2021, Yangzum's all-female team summited Annapurna (8,091m) without supplemental oxygen.
Fifty years ago this week, the UK experienced the worst mountaineering debacle in modern history. Five adolescent students and their guide perished during a weekend school trip to the Cairngorms.
A weekend expedition to Ben Macdui
On November 20, 1971, 14 students from Ainslie Park secondary school set out for a weekend school outing to the Cairngorms mountain range in Scotland's eastern Highlands.
Ben Beattie, Ainslie Park's 23-year-old outdoor education teacher, spearheaded the short expedition. Joining him were Beattie's 20-year-old girlfriend and fellow mountaineer, Catherine Davidson, and 18-year-old Sheelagh Sunderland, a mountain guide-in-training at the Lagganlia outdoor center near the Cairngorms.
Beattie's plan involved dividing the students into two groups, according to experience. The groups would take different routes over the Cairngorm's plateau to Ben Macdui (1,309m), the second-highest peak in the UK. Beattie helmed the eight strongest hikers. Davidson and Sunderland oversaw the less experienced group.
The expedition would, in theory, take two days and one night. Both teams would meet at Corrour Bothy, where they would set up camp before hiking back the following day.
That was the plan.
A blizzard strikes the Cairngorms
Although Beattie, Davidson, and Sunderland were prepared for cold conditions, they weren't ready for a severe turn in the weather. A blizzard walloped the groups, disorienting them on the featureless plateau. Temperature drops would soon prove fatal.
Beattie's team was able to secure higher ground and a shelter where they spent the night. Facing similarly dire conditions the next day, Beattie steered his students off the plateau to a hut where he could radio the Lagganlia Centre.
Davidson and Sunderland's team were not so fortunate. For two days, they huddled on the mountainside in their bivouac, unable to move because of the storm. Lagganlia dispatched a team of 50 rescue workers from surrounding areas to locate the missing group.
On Monday, November 22, a helicopter crew spotted Davidson crawling and searching for help. When they reached Sunderland and the six students, they found all but one deceased and buried in snow. Carol Bertram, Diane Dudgeon, Lorraine Dick, Susan Byrne, and William Kerr, aged 15 and 16, along with Sunderland, had perished. Only 15-year-old Raymond Leslie and Davidson survived.
Impact
Three months later, authorities conducted a fatal accident inquiry into the Cairngorms tragedy. It revealed that the permission forms issued to parents of the Ainsley Park students did not state that the expedition would include winter mountaineering. Still, the quorum held that Beattie and John Paisley, Lagganlia Centere's principal, were not responsible for the fatalities.
The inquiry did require schools to provide more exacting information to parents and guardians about excursions involving certain risks. It also called for improved training and certification standards of instructors and for institutions like Lagganlia to consult with experts when planning emergency accommodations.
Now, 50 years on, it's difficult to quantify how impactful Britain's greatest mountain disaster in the Cairngorms has been on mountaineering and outdoor guiding protocols. The Lagganlia Centre remains open and continues to instruct youth in the safe pursuit of adventure.
When minors do extraordinary things, controversy follows. That rule was no different for Laura Dekker. Bucking opposition from the authorities because of her age, in 2012 she became the youngest person to sail solo around the world. She was 16 years old.
For her entire life, Dekker has been around the ocean. While her unconventional parents (a Dutch boatbuilder father and a German circus performer mother) were on a seven-year sail around the world, Dekker was born off the coast of Whangarei, New Zealand.
She spent her first five years almost exclusively at sea. Eventually, her family returned to the Netherlands. Dekker lived with her father after her parent’s divorce.
Being in her father’s care helped Dekker’s fledging sailing career. In those early years when it was just the two of them, Dekker's father was building a 20m Norwegian fishing cutter. She was eager to help, and her father obliged.
Receives her first boat, age 6
Those moments together were more than father-daughter bonding. They were inspirational for Dekker’s future. Soon, she began building a boat for herself. Then for her sixth birthday, Dekker received a boat of her own.
That first boat was an Optimist dinghy, designed for children’s use. As Dekker developed her skills on the ocean, her father sailed beside her in a windsurfer. Before long, she was sailing solo.
At nine years old, Dekker began competition sailing. She assisted her father in a 24-hour sailing race on board his friend's Hurley 700. When the race was over, she convinced the boat’s owner to let her borrow it in exchange for cleaning and maintenance.
The Hurley 700 gave Dekker a chance to learn how to handle a boat more aligned to her ability than the smaller ones she was assigned because of age. The boat also fell within the 7m size limit which Dutch law imposes on minors.
Never short of ambition, Dekker and her dog Spot took that boat on a seven-week voyage around Holland and the Wadden Islands. When she returned, Dekker put four years' worth of savings from odd jobs into a boat of her own.
By then, Dekker was 11 years old and owner of a Hurley 700. In it, she sailed around the Netherlands, spending all her free time either on the water or maintaining the craft. But Dekker had her sights set on an ambitious voyage. She wanted to sail alone around the world.
Not everyone was as enthusiastic about the idea as she. Her father tried to discourage her by suggesting that she first sail to England. The English Channel is particularly challenging for sailboats. Surely that would deter her, he figured.
Run-ins with child services
This was the first of Dekker’s run-ins with the authorities.
Leaving Maurik, she arrived first in Maassluis, then across the English Channel. Strong winds delayed her arrival into Lowestoft, but she eventually made it.
English authorities were stunned that a 13-year-old was left to sail alone on such a voyage. They placed Dekker in a children’s home but released her when her father arrived to collect her. He returned her to her boat and she sailed home alone.
Undeterred by the English Channel as her father had hoped, Dekker remained fixated on sailing around the world. Eventually, her father relented, offering to strengthen her skills before departure.
"He just taught me everything he knew about making the boat safe," she said. "He would sit down with me every night and tell me it would not be fun. Mum was worried but didn't say no."
Dutch authorities had other ideas.
Perhaps injudiciously, Dekker wrote of her plans in her local newspaper. That’s when Child Welfare stepped in.
Eight court cases try to stop her
Over the next 10 months, eight court cases brought by the government and Child Protection Services argued that she was too young to risk her life.
First, they placed her in the shared custody of her father and Child Protection, to prevent her from leaving. Then they combed through her upbringing for signs of mistreatment as a minor. When they didn't find anything, they released her back into her father’s custody.
"They thought it was dangerous," Dekker said after the court battle. "Well, everywhere is dangerous. They don't sail and they don't know what boats are, and they are scared of them."
Dutch maritime regulations prohibit a captain younger than 16 from sailing a boat longer than seven metres in Dutch waters. To avoid this, Dekker set off on her east-west journey from Gibraltar in 2010. She was 14 years old.
Away she goes
Sailing a 12m red ketch also named Guppy, which was adapted for solo circumnavigation, she first sailed the Caribbean, then through the Panama Canal and over to the Galapagos Islands. Then further across the Pacific: to Tahiti, Fiji, and through the Torres Strait to Darwin, Australia.
There, further controversy followed when she admitted that the hard work of sailing prevented her from keeping up with her studies. School officials said that she should be in a classroom.
Next, she spent 48 days crossing the Indian Ocean non-stop. Monstrous winds swiveled her boat from bow to stern. Although shaken when she arrived in Durban, she remained committed to her goal.
On her last leg across the South Atlantic, Dekker struggled against high seas and heavy winds. In 2012, at the age of 16, she completed her circumnavigation in St. Marteen. She was the youngest person ever to do so. The journey took her 17 months.
Hard times
At times, she doubted herself, especially when eight-metre waves washed over Guppy, flooding the cabin. Or when vermin infested her dry food supply. Or when sharks circled the little boat. As her father warned her, it wasn't fun. But her willpower pushed her through.
Although Dekker is a record holder, Guinness World Records and the World Sailing Speed Record Council would not verify the claim. They no longer recognize records for very young sailors in order to discourage dangerous attempts.
Abby Sunderland -- a 16-year-old American sailor –- had attempted the same goal two months before Dekker. Sunderland was rescued in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Australian Jessica Watson completed a 210-day solo journey. She was a few months older than Dekker.
The Qitdlarssuaq story has not been made into a movie yet, but it should be. It has all the ingredients of epic drama: murder, magic, rivalry, cannibalism, and a heroic figure both dark and charismatic. Qitdlarssuaq –- the great Qitdlaq –- was a man “little encumbered by scruples,” as one scholar described him. “A man’s life was for him an affair of no great significance.”
Qitdlarssuaq was born in the early 1800s around Cape Searle on Baffin Island, near what is now Auyuittuq National Park. In 1832, Qitdlarssuaq murdered a man as a favor to his hunting companion Oqe. Vendettas among the Inuit of that era were common, and both Qitdlarssuaq and Oqe were now marked men.
To breathe easier, they gathered a group of family and friends and moved to northern Baffin Island. As many as 50 Inuit joined the migrants, a testimony to Qitdlarssuaq’s charisma. He must have sold the move as a quest for a better life rather than as a strategic withdrawal.
The Battle of the Iceberg
After almost 20 years, the victim’s determined relatives caught up with them on the east coast of Bylot Island, a picturesque circumflex off northern Baffin. Qitdlarssuaq and his allies cut steps up a frozen-in iceberg, which they used as cover from the hail of arrows and as high ground from which to launch their own retaliative salvos. Eventually, the attackers withdrew. Although they’d repelled the invaders, it was clear to Qitdlarssuaq that it was time to move again.
That spring, they crossed the shifting ice of Lancaster Sound and settled on the south coast of Devon Island. Not much distance separated them from another attack –- on a clear day, you can see the snowy crown of Bylot Island from their camp -– but the open water and pack ice was a good barrier against vengeance-seekers. The attackers never troubled them again.
Meeting Inglefield and McClintock
For years, the migrants hunted the area’s abundant walrus, bears, and seals. In 1853, Qitdlarssuaq met Commander Inglefield of the British Navy, whose ship was in the region to stock a food cache. By 1858, Qitdlarssuaq’s group had moved 80km east, to Philpots Island. In fact a peninsula, Philpots is a comparatively lush oasis on an otherwise barren coast. That summer, Qitdlarssuaq bumped into a second British explorer, Leopold McClintock. Through McClintock’s interpreter, Qitdlarssuaq heard about the Polar Inuit of Northwest Greenland for the first time.
By now, Qitdlarssuaq had a reputation as a formidable shaman. A glow was said to hover above his head as he walked at night -- a reference, perhaps, to his bald pate, unusual among Inuit. Stories exist of him turning into a polar bear, or into a bird that went off on long reconnaissance flights. During one of these flights, Qitdlarssuaq brought back news of the Polar Inuit to the north. Probably he forgot to mention that McClintock had already told him about them.
At this point, their migration becomes more a spiritual quest than a flight from trouble. Philpots Island had good hunting, with no vengeful figures from the past to imperil them. But in 1859, after eight years on Devon Island, the aging but still-vigorous Qitdlarssuaq convinced the group to move north again.
Family groups travel far more slowly than a hunting party. Their six-metre-long komatiks –- a necessary length to protect their fragile kayaks –- would have struggled to maneuver through rough sea ice. Such a large group would also have needed to stop for long periods to hunt.
When morale sagged, the inspirational Qitdlarssuaq spurred them on with the eternal motto of the traveler: “Do you know the desire to see new lands? Do you know the desire to meet new people?”
Rivalry between two leaders
Nevertheless, by the time they reached Orne Island, a low speck off the east coast of Ellesmere, a schism had developed between Qitdlarssuaq and his old accomplice Oqe. Oqe had long been sullen, and now he began to speak wistfully of whale meat and other culinary favorites that they had enjoyed at their old Baffin haunts. He began to “long for the ‘onions of Egypt’,” as scholar Guy Marie-Rousselière put it.
So now two groups, the forward-lookers led by Qitdlarssuaq and the backward-longers led by Oqe, shared an uncomfortably small spit on Orne Island. Their two clusters of qammaqs -- sod, stone, and whalebone shelters -- are about as distant as physically possible on that appendix of land.
Like Philpots Island and south Devon, Orne Island offered great hunting. It lay on the edge of the North Water polynya. Seals sunned on the sea ice; heaps of walrus drifted past on floes; polar bears passed constantly and even gave birth in nearby Talbot Inlet. Little wonder that despite tensions, both groups remained there for two years.
Half the group return home
Finally, around 1862, Oqe and at least 24 followers turned south toward home. There is no evidence that they ever made it. A year later, Qitdlarssuaq and up to 18 others pressed north another 150km to Pim Island. Then they crossed frozen Smith Sound to Greenland.
Near Etah, a hunting camp often used by American and British expeditions, the migrants found a cabin left by U.S. explorer Isaac Israel Hayes. Lighting a fire inside, they touched off some of Hayes’s explosives. Several died. The following spring, they met their first Greenlander. An old injury had left the man with one leg; an explorer’s physician had given him a wooden stump, on which he limped around fluidly. Qitdlarssuaq wondered if this was a land of wooden-legged people.
The Polar Inuit of Northwest Greenland had been isolated for centuries by the near-impassable ice porridge of Melville Bay. Only about 140 of them remained, in scattered communities. Over the centuries, they had forgotten how to make the kayak, the bow and arrow, and the fish leister, or three-pronged spear. This meant they couldn’t hunt caribou or char, and even their marine mammal opportunities were limited. They were within one bad hunting season of dying out entirely.
Mixing with the Greenlanders
Qitdlarssuaq and his group soon integrated with the Polar Inuit and re-introduced that crucial technology. Their dialects were different, but they could understand one another. Several inter-married. The migrants revitalized a vanishing culture.
It would have seemed that the aged Qitdlarssuaq had found peace at last.
But this arctic Greek myth had one act remaining. Qitdlarssuaq had a falling out with a Greenland shaman. His people and even some Greenlanders pressured him to murder the rogue conjuror. With what must have been great reluctance, Qitdlarssuaq complied. He ambushed the man outside his snow house and stabbed him to death in the armpit. It is odd that as strong a personality as Qitdlarssuaq seems always to have acted as the hit man for others.
Qitdlarssuaq dies
Soon after, Qitdlarssuaq’s health began to fail. Ever the roamer, he longed to see his native land one last time. About 20 of the original migrants agreed to join him. But the party had barely crossed back to Ellesmere Island when Qitdlarssuaq died of a stomach ailment, around 1870. Some say he was buried on the ice, others on land at Cape Herschel.
Although Qitdlarssuaq was dead, his momentum continued to propel his followers forward. Soon they were back on Orne Island. Then a fateful error: They decided to move to Makinson Inlet, 150km south on Ellesmere when one hunter brought back favorable reports of caribou, muskoxen, and fish. By the time they reached Makinson and discovered that it was not as fertile as promised, it was too late in the season to return to Orne Island.
The place of great famine
They built qammaqs on the shore of a lake, then hunkered down for the winter, starving. Several died. Two men first ate some of the bodies, then began to kill the living in order to feed on them. One young man named Merqusaq managed to fight off the cannibals but lost an eye in the struggle. He and four others fled the dark doings of that camp, which they called Perdlerarvigssuaq –- the place of great famine. Two years afterward, in 1873, the five survivors managed to return to Greenland.
Decades later, the fantastically weathered, one-eyed Merqusaq told the story of the Qitdlarssuaq migration to explorer and ethnographer Knud Rasmussen. It is thanks to Merqusaq’s survival that many details of the Qitdlarssuaq saga also survived.
Today, over one-third of the Polar Inuit are direct descendants of those bold migrants from Baffin Island.
Metaphorically and literally, Ken Smith is a man who lives on the fringes. For the past four decades, the 74-year-old has hewn an unconventional, off-grid life in Scotland's rural Loch Treig. And the "Hermit of Treig" is the subject of an intimate documentary by filmmaker Lizzie McKenzie, who spent two years documenting Smith's unconventional lifestyle.
Although many of us associate the wilderness hermit life with a log cabin in the Alaskan or Yukon wilderness, several eccentric wayfarers also call the Scottish Highlands home, according to The Guardian.
A brief history of a hermit
In Smith's case, he had a lifelong love of wilderness and exploration and spent much of his early adulthood traveling the world on foot.
His decision to live reclusively transpired after Smith learned that his mother and father had passed away while he was on a 35,000km trek across Canada's Yukon Territory. When he returned home to the news, his grief was so immense that the young Smith took to wandering across the UK.
In 1984, he came upon Loch Treig, the 'lonely loch' as he endearingly calls it. There, a two-hour walk from the nearest market, nestled in the Highlands, Smith built the humble log cabin that he has called home ever since. No electricity, no running water, no gas.
"The land loves you back."
As a capable fisher and gardener, Smith has thrived off the land and nearby streams. The Hermit even brews beer and vints wine. He's reportedly stored 80 gallons of homemade wine in anticipation of his funeral.
His way of existing is exceptionally sustainable, give or take his monthly supply run to town and a recent run-in with medical mishaps. "I think if you love the land, it sort of loves you back. It loves you back in all the things it produces for you," Smith said.
For the most part, modern luxuries (which, in his view, include electricity, plumbing, and gas) aren't particularly useful because they aren't essential. The Hermit of Treig isn't concerned with being "the most off-grid" person or garnering any such notoriety.
He owns a radio for weather forecasts, a wristwatch, a few cameras to help him remember things, and a GPS beacon, which he turns to "check-in" mode every Sunday for family and friends afar.
In a bout of good luck, a friend gifted Smith the beacon in 2019, just days before he suffered a stroke. The Hermit sent out an SOS, which first pinged a station in Houston, Texas, before relaying to local Scottish responders. Emergency personnel helicoptered to the lonely loch and flew Smith to a hospital where he stayed until deemed recovered enough to return to Treig.
Owing to residual memory and vision impairments, Smith now pays for biweekly deliveries of supplies. Still, the elderly Scotsman remains considerably self-sufficient. And, contrary to the moniker, he maintains close relationships with family and friends made throughout his travels — through letter-writing, of course.
'The Hermit of Treig' Documentary
Smith's longtime friend and film director, Lizzie McKenzie, offers a close look into his spirited, unconventional world in The Hermit of Treig ,which premiered on November 9 and is available to UK viewers through BBC Scotland.
On February 13, 1983, 27-year-old ski mountaineer Rudi Moder disappeared during a two-to-three day solo trek in Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP). Six days later, Moder's roommate in Fort Collins, Colorado, reported him missing.
From February 20-23, ground and aerial crews as well as an avalanche search dog scoured RMNP's northwestern perimeter. Except for a small food container and a handbuilt snow shelter housing Moder's sleeping bag and nonessential gear, the recovery effort was a bust.
Follow-up ground and air operations continued the search in the spring and summer, but the German skier was never seen nor heard from again.
That is, until the dog days of 2020 when a hiker discovered desiccated human remains while passing through the park's Skeleton Gulch, an area that was part of the original search swath 37 years before.
But conditions precluded an actual recovery of the skeletal leftovers when wildfires forced the area to close. By the time that the fires abated, snow was already falling, covering the high elevation area.
It wasn't until the summer of 2021 that park rangers and FBI officials could extract the remains. At Skeleton Gulch, they also uncovered ski mo equipment, apparel, and a few personal effects.
But it's unclear if the story ends there. Comparisons of the subject's teeth to Moder's old dental records failed to yield conclusive results. Officials, however, seem satisfied that the remains are those of Moder.
“The discovery and recovery of Rudi Moder’s remains close out a nearly four-decade-long cold case," the Park stated in a news release.
While Fridtjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen sought fame and attention, Fredrik Hjalmar Johansen preferred obscurity. Yet Johansen was integral to their success. Only 80 years after his death did Johansen finally earn his place as one of Norway’s most important explorers.
Johansen’s life was turbulent. Struggling to find his place in society, he focused on sport. By the age of 18, he was a national gymnastics champion. By 21, he was a world champion in gymnastics. Preferring solo pursuits, he also excelled at skiing.
An athlete who disliked attention
Through gymnastics, he became a celebrity in Norway. But he didn’t like it. The publicity forced him into a depression. He drank excessively. But when a fresh opportunity presented itself in 1893, he took it.
Norwegian-born scientist and explorer Fridtjof Nansen had a plan to drift across the Arctic Ocean via the North Pole in a unique vessel, the walnut-shaped Fram. From the remains of another expedition that had washed up on Greenland's shores, Nansen cleverly calculated that the drift would carry him near the still-unvisited North Pole.
Nansen had already filled all his crew positions but he saw value in Johansen’s ski experience. He offered Johansen a place on the Fram in exchange for work as a stoker and dog handler.
Johansen relished his time away from the burden of city life and found peace in the wild Arctic. To him, it was an escape.
Nansen-Johansen's great trek
Nansen, in turn, recognized Johansen’s competence. When he realized that the Fram was going to miss the North Pole, he invited Johansen to join him in trying to ski and dogsled there. They didn't quite reach it, but they came much closer than anyone had before. Once, Nansen saved Johansen when he fell through the ice. On another occasion, a polar bear attacked Johansen. Nansen again saved him.
Eventually, the pair retreated, using the kayaks that they kept atop their sleds to bridge the open water when they had to. After many adventures, they landed in Franz Josef Land, off the coast of Russia. Here, they spent the long winter, well-fed on an all-meat diet of polar bear, walrus, and seal.
Their luck continued the following summer when Nansen miraculously bumped into the only other explorer in that region. They were saved.
Despite failing to reach the North Pole, the pair returned to a hero's welcome. Johansen was again uncomfortable with the attention. He publicly credited Nansen with their successful return. Perhaps naive about his capabilities, he undersold his expertise.
When Johansen was in the Arctic, he flourished. So over the next two years, he participated in four Svalbard expeditions, including wintering with German explorer, Theodor Lerner.
To Antarctica
Then in 1910, on Nansen’s recommendation, he was back on the Fram. This time, he was one of Amundsen’s men heading to Antarctica. Amundsen was famously racing Englishman Robert Scott to reach the South Pole first.
Respected and ambitious, Amundsen had a firm eye on his goal. He was expected to beat Scott in the South Pole race. Amundsen was unstoppable. But Johansen's own competence put the two at loggerheads.
When they first set off for the South Pole, Amundsen made a critical error. They began too early, still winter, and it was too cold. Some of the crew suffered frostbite. They made little progress and had to return to camp.
Amundsen showed little regard for his team. He sped back to camp with his dogsled, taking with him the cooking equipment and shelter. He wanted to stay ahead of an impending storm.
Johansen noticed an inexperienced lieutenant in trouble and came to his aid. Through the blizzard, Johansen carried his comrade 75km back to camp. He saved the lieutenant’s life.
Falling out with Amundsen
Tempers were high back at camp. Johansen argued with Amundsen, belittling a decision that might have cost lives. Scolding the proud and ruthless Amundsen in front of his men was a pivotal moment in the downward trajectory of Johansen’s career.
Johansen was demoted and assigned minor duties. Amundsen removed him from the next South Pole expedition and ordered the crew never to speak of Johansen or his accusations. Effectively, Amundsen ensured that when he penned his accounts of his eventual successful South Pole expedition, Johansen’s involvement would be omitted.
Back in civilization, unrecognized again, Johansen succumbed entirely to depression, seeking solace in alcohol. In 1913, he took a gun to his head in an Oslo park.
For almost a century, Johansen was forgotten. Amundsen enjoyed a celebrated career as an explorer and led expeditions until his disappearance in 1928. He not only reached the South Pole and traversed the Northwest Passage. Without realizing it, he was even the first to attain the North Pole, flying over it in a dirigible in 1926.
Nansen was a global superstar, not just in exploration but as a scientist and diplomat. He made early inroads into the fledgling sciences of neurology and oceanography and received the Nobel Peace Prize. Johansen received little more than a gravesite in his local cemetery.
Then in 1997, Norwegian journalist Ragnar Kvam published a biography of this forgotten man. Titled: Den tredje mann: Beretningen om Hjalmar Johansen, the book exposed Johansen’s true role in polar exploration. His legacy was finally restored.
Partly due to poor decisions and partly due to character, Johansen didn't make a deserving mark during his lifetime. But now he has rightfully joined Norway's great triumvirate of Nansen, Amundsen, and Sverdrup, as one of the great polar explorers.
The Norwegian Paul Bjorvig (1857-1935) usually isn’t considered a explorer, yet compared with some of the pre-Monty Pythonesque individuals on whose expeditions he took part, he was indeed an explorer. An explorer whose travails north of latitude 66˚ he accepted quite naturally, as if they were intrinsic part of the terrain. What follows is the best-known of those travails…
In 1898, Bjorvig signed on as an ice pilot in a North Pole expedition led by two unlikely Americans, a Chicago journalist named William Wellman and a Missouri alcoholic named Evelyn Baldwin. The expedition used Russia’s remote Franz Josef Land as a base camp to reach the Pole, but the leaders spent most of their time roaming the archipelago and giving (in the words of Wellman) “islands, straights, and points good American names.” For some reason, they thought Russian names were inappropriate for a Russian place.
While the two leaders were engaged in their roaming, Bjorvig and another Norwegian, Bernt Bentsen, remained in an ice cave named Fort McKlinley after the then-U.S. president William McKinley, and looked after the expedition’s supplies. A team of sled dogs shared the cave and sometimes used that cave, not to mention the two mens’ sleeping bags, for their lavatorial needs.
This habitation was only forty miles southeast from one of the ice caves that explorer Fridtjof Nansen shared with his expedition mate Hjalmar Johansen a few years earlier. In fact, Bentsen had spent three previous years in the Siberian Arctic on Nansen’s ship the Fram, but his quarters on that celebrated polar vessel were luxurious compared to the ice cave he shared with Bjorvig.
Having become increasingly ill, probably from scurvy, Bentsen died in January of 1899. His last request to Bjorvig was: “Please don’t let a polar bear eat my remains.” Bjorvig promised to honor this request.
As it happened, the only way to keep a polar bear from eating Bentsen
was to keep his body in the ice cave. So Bjorvig wrapped Bentsen’s body in
his, Bentsen’s, sleeping bag and, because the cave was so small, he was obliged to keep the sleeping bag next to his own. He was also obliged to keep the sled dogs from regarding Bentsen’s body as cuisine.
Meanwhile, Baldwin was drinking himself into a state of stupefaction in the crude Masonic lodge he’d recently constructed. Why construct a Masonic Lodge in Franz Josef Land? Because Baldwin thought it would be popular with his American Masonic brothers who might pay a visit to these parts.
As for Wellman, he returned to Fort McKinley in the spring. Upon entering the ice cave, he asked: “Where’s Bentsen?”
"Dead,” Bjorvig replied, pointing to the sleeping bag. Then he offered Wellman a cup of coffee.
Later, he buried Bentsen’s body under a nearby pile of rocks.
When Bjorvig returned to Norway, the media paid almost no attention to him. Nowadays, of course, reporters and their ilk would be stabbing microphones in his face, asking him questions like “Did your dead bedfellow’s smell interfere with your appetite?”
If he had been asked that sort of question, Bjorvig might have replied: “The important thing was honoring my friend’s last request.”
Then he might have uttered the following words, which he subsequently wrote in his journal after describing several more of the travails bequeathed to him by cold places:
“If a man has no sorrows, he has no joys."
PolarExplorers is seeking applicants for its newly minted Matthew Henson expedition scholarship for people of color. The U.S.-based expeditionary organization targets applicants that aspire to become polar guides or outdoor leaders.
"There is a massive lack of diversity and equity in the outdoor industry. This is particularly true in the high-adventure/expedition corner of the industry," said PolarExplorers director Annie Aggens.
Matthew Henson's legacy for people of color
The Matthew Henson Scholarship is named after the Black polar explorer who lived from 1866-1955. With the scholarship, the PolarExplorer's committee aims to provide people of color with the confidence and preparedness necessary to flourish as cold-weather expedition leaders.
"Henson...embodied the traits and characteristics that define the world's most successful adventurers...With his wide-ranging knowledge and passion for learning, he developed a vast skill set that led to the success of many expeditions," said the PolarExplorers committee.
"Because he was African American, he did not receive the recognition he was due until well after he died. His legacy lives on in the countless people who have been inspired by his life."
Polar expedition scholarship information
Two successful bidders will receive the Matthew Henson Scholarship, which fully subsidizes PolarExplorers' Polar Shakedown Training. Held in northern Minnesota in early February 2022 (exact dates TBD), the Polar Shakedown Training seminar provides one-on-one, hands-on expedition training by polar guides. The scholarship will cover the core costs of the course, including the following:
- Guides and permits
- Group equipment
- Ski systems
- Sleeping system
- Sleds
- Communication and safety equipment
- Lodging and meals
All people of color with aspirations to work in polar expedition are encouraged to apply. Qualified applicants will come to the program with the following:
- Prior experience in backcountry camping
- Physical fitness to endure long and laborious days
- Keen interest in the training program's "steep learning curve"
PolarExplorers does not provide travel to and from Polar Shakedown Training. Recipients must provide apparel and personal equipment for the seminar, but the organizers will assist participants in sourcing some of the required equipment when necessary. It requires both scholarship recipients to complete additional paperwork and provide proof of COVID vaccination before official enrollment in the training program.
Applications are due December 1, 2021, and scholarship winners will receive notification by December 15, 2021.
Learn more and apply for the Matthew Henson scholarship at polarexplorers.com.
An avalanche on Ecuador's highest peak, Chimborazo (6,263m), collided with 16 alpinists on Sunday, October 24. At the time of writing, three climbers were confirmed deceased, three were undergoing intense medical care, and three remained unaccounted for, according to Quito emergency responders.
The mountaineering group was at 6,100m, just 160m below the summit at the time. Authorities have not released the climbers' identities, but all are believed to be Ecuadorean nationals.
Chimborazo, in the Cordillera range of the Andes, is an inactive stratovolcano. The caldera last erupted around 550 A.D. and typically lies dormant for 1,000 years between eruptions. Volcanic activity was not at play here.
Instead, bad weather and snow melt reportedly caused Sunday's avalanche. Experts with the Geophysical Institute of Quito explained that Chimborazo's corniced summit and severely steep grade make this peak especially dangerous.
Chimborazo's past avalanches, eruptions
This is not the first time that an avalanche on Chimborazo has proven deadly. In the 1970s, a passenger plane carrying 59 people slammed into the mountainside, which an avalanche had obscured from the pilots' view. Authorities didn't uncover the wreckage until 2003.
In 1994, an avalanche killed a group of 10 international ascensionists.
In 2015, climbers discovered at around 5,500m the remains of three people who perished 20 to 30 years earlier.
In the 19th century, the Sierra Madre Occidental was a prime hiding spot for all manner of outlaws and misfits. The “mother mountain range” in Mexico is 1,500km of canyons, valleys, high plateaus and folded mountains. This vast and confusing network of hiding places allowed various groups to evade law enforcement and conduct guerilla warfare. The fierce Chiricahua Apache, especially, used these lands against Mexican and American forces.
Alone among all the warring native peoples, the Apaches generated almost supernatural awe and terror. At the same time, their activities are the most poorly documented -- full of opinion, myth, and hearsay.
Despite their fabled resourcefulness, the Chiricahua of the Sierra Madre suddenly vanished from the history books. Rumors spread of their demise. But what really happened to them?
Tensions and war
Tensions between the Chiricahua and Americans began around 1848, after the Mexican-American War. Foreigners poured into Chiricahua territory. The U.S. Army fought the Chiricahua, and many hostile incidents occurred on both sides.
It was a genuine clash of cultures for which history offers no answer. The Apaches were warriors and raiders. To the ranchers, farmers, miners, and settlers of northern Mexico, this meant murder and theft.
Eventually, the Chiricahua adopted a lifestyle of restriction and confinement on reservations. But treaties and truces could not keep the resentment toward the Americans at bay. Conflicts culminated in a guerilla war.
The Chiricahua hid in the Chiricahua Mountains, the Dragoon Mountains, the White Mountains in Arizona, and eventually the Sierra Madre. In 1886, the leader and medicine man Geronimo, along with Chiricahua Chief Naiche and 30 others, surrendered to American forces. They were sent to prison in Florida and incarcerated for years.
After authorities released them, they settled in Oklahoma and New Mexico. The descendants of Geronimo and his band of renegades live there to this day. However, the tale of the Sierra Madre’s Chiricahua Apaches did not end there.
The fugitive band
It was rumored that more than 100 people remained hidden in the northern Sierra Madre after the surrender. This may have included bands of Nednhi Apaches and those native to these mountains. Writer Douglas Meed states that this remnant group chose this fugitive life rather than that on a reservation. They raided ranches, stole cattle and livestock, kidnapped and killed civilians, then vanished back into their mountain fastnesses.
The elusive group’s activities became the stuff of legend. They kept residents of the Southwest constantly on edge. Cowboys attempted to track them but they always came up short. Scholars believe that the Chiricahua covered their horses’ hooves to conceal their tracks. They likely moved daily and in small groups to avoid detection.
Stories of kidnappings and murders circulated even more in the late 19th century. In one famous incident, two Chiricahuas broke into a house, killed a woman and man, and wounded a second man. On another occasion, the wife and son of Mexican rancher Francisco Fimbres were murdered in Sonora in the 1920s. Fimbres led a revenge campaign, killing Chiricahua men and women alike. Oral history suggests that he spared children.
Kidnappings on both sides
Kidnappings were also normal. According to general Apache culture, kidnappings were important for the continuation of the tribe. A rumor persisted about a white child named Charlie McComas, who was supposedly kidnapped in the 1880s. This legend was never verified, but it sparked debate when a white chief made appearances in multiple eyewitness testimonies. Stories like these continued well into the 1930s.
Kidnappings and adoptions of supposed Apache children by cowboys were also not uncommon. We can assume that many other Chiricahua integrated eventually into Mexican and American populations. In 1896, a couple adopted an Apache girl after a raid on her camp in South Arizona. They named her May (nicknamed Patchy by the townsfolk). She died at the age of five after being severely burned in a fire.
As late as 1933, Mexican cowboys stumbled upon a pre-adolescent girl, half-naked and roaming the wild alone. They took her to the nearest police station. Officials placed her in a cell and put her on display, as they suspected that she was a Sierra Madre Chiricahua Apache. Since she didn't speak, they couldn't verify this. Sadly, she died of starvation in her cell. They called her “La Nina Bronca”, or the Wild Girl.
Most famous was the tale of an Apache girl, Carmela Harris. She lived in the western Sierra Madre with her grandmother in a mainly female Apache camp, when Mexican ranchers kidnapped her in 1932.
Although she was just four years old, she described the restricted, suffocating lifestyle of the Apache camp, where they prohibited roaming and noise. The Mexican ranchers massacred the camp. Little Carmela (previously called Owl Eyes) started a new life in Los Angeles with an American woman named Dixie Harris. Carmela lived the rest of her days with her mother, never marrying. She died suddenly in her 40s.
Their legend persists
A few ethnographers and anthropologists searched for the remaining Chiricahua before the Second World War. Grenville Goodwin, his son Neil Goodwin, and Helge Ingstad led the search. Ingstad later became famous for co-discovering the only Norse settlement in the New World.
All three spent time among Apache groups. Grenville Goodwin found a possible abandoned Chiricahua Apache camp in the Sierra Madre. Neil Goodwin continued in his father’s footsteps, finding two more possible abandoned camps. Ingstad launched an unsuccessful expedition with two unreliable Apache guides, who were suspected of contacting Chiricahua in the area beforehand.
All three expeditions were inconclusive. Although the romantics among us would love to imagine that some members of that uncompromising band are still hiding out, ghost-like, in the Sierra Nevada, evidence suggests that the remaining Chiricahua of that region mixed with Mexicans or died out.
However, this does not mean that Chiricahua people as a whole have vanished -- just the legendary Sierra Madre band. Today, other Chiricahua live on reservations in New Mexico, Oklahoma, and southern Arizona.
Four women and one man have died on Russia's Mount Elbrus when a major blizzard caught a large commercial group on its way down from the summit.
According to preliminary reports, four of the deceased climbers froze to death. Another climber fell sick during the ascent and turned around. She eventually "died in the guide's arms," the AFP agency reported. Others were rescued in highly difficult conditions.
A later and more expansive account from Mountain.ru said that at 10 am, the 16 clients and four guides had reached Elbrus's summit plateau. The lead guides were Ilya Chuikov and Anton Nikiforov, assisted by Taulan Kipkeev and Igor Dankov. On the plateau, a woman fell sick and started down with Dankov. The rest of the group continued toward the summit.
Sudden blizzard
Fifteen minutes later, "the pressure dropped sharply, the wind began to blow up from below and an unprecedented storm broke out. Visibility from dense snow was no more than half a metre," reported Mountain.ru.
The woman died before reaching the Sedlovina hut. Dankov called for help, then descended on his own. Meanwhile, authorities launched a rescue operation.
On the upper part of the mountain, the guides divided the group into "fast" and "slow" ones and tried to save everyone's lives. But one of the participants broke a leg while descending, slowing down the rest. Two died on the trail and two others collapsed. They were carried to the Garabashi station at 3,900m, where they died without regaining consciousness.
The victims were Anna Makarova, Vyacheslav Borisov, Elena Nesterova, Anastasia Zhigulina, and Irina Galchuka, all in their 30s.
Rescuers evacuated 11 with frostbite and other injuries to a nearby hospital. Three escaped unharmed and are resting at a hotel in the area.
Elbrus's gentle slopes draw the ill-prepared
Mount Elbrus (5,642m), an inactive volcano located in the northern Caucasus near the Georgian border, is the highest peak in Europe and thus one of the Seven Summits. Its normal southern route includes no technical sections.
It also features easy access: A ski resort on lower Elbrus includes lifts up to Base Camp at the Barrel Huts. Snowcats typically convey climbers up to the Pashtuchov Rocks at 4,700m on summit day. This makes Elbrus a popular and often crowded peak.
Its mild slopes and dome-like summit even allow climbing all the way on skis or snowshoes. Peak season runs through spring and summer, but it can also be climbed in fall -- depending on weather, as the recent events have sadly shown.
Emergency evacuations and tragedy are not uncommon at Elbrus. Its apparent ease encourages some inexperienced people to treat it as just a really big hill. Many are not properly acclimatized, have inadequate equipment, or are in poor shape.
The Alpine Club in the UK is celebrating a century of Everest history by inviting everyone to join them for an online tour of their special exhibit. "Those Who Were There" presents photos, memorabilia, and information from the 1920s British expeditions to Everest.
The exhibition is physically open to the public at their London premises until October 20, but those of us who can't visit in person can still enjoy the experience. The Alpine Club will live-stream the exhibition on September 27 from 4 pm GMT. The half-hour broadcast will be available on the Alpine Club's Facebook page.
Club librarian Beth Hodgett will guide and narrate the tour. Artifacts on display include the watercolors of Howard Somervell, a piece of the mountain itself, and Sandy Irvine’s ice ax.
“During the past 18 months it has been especially hard, and at times impossible, for everyone who might wish to attend the exhibition to see it in person," exhibition curator Barbara Grigor-Taylor said. This online event will give large numbers of people access for the first time.
First steps for Mallory
The 1921 British Mount Everest reconnaissance expedition, launched by the Royal Geographic Society and the Alpine Club, ventured into Tibet, crossed the Nangpa-La, and descended to the Rongbuk Glacier to seek a way up the mountain.
Led by Charles Howard-Bury, the team included a young George Mallory on his first visit to the Himalaya. They made it as far as the North Col. From there, Mallory, who had become a climbing leader, first saw his path to glory and his fate. Both unfolded in subsequent expeditions in 1922 and 1924.
John Colter was one of the best hunters of the 19th century. He mapped uncharted parts of Blackfoot territory in the western U.S. with Lewis and Clark. When their expedition ended, he spent six years trapping, often alone, and may have been the first explorer to see Yellowstone National Park. But his daring escape from the Blackfoot cemented his legacy.
A fateful meeting with Meriwether Lewis
By the time that Colter was 35, frontier living had already given him impressive skills. Meriwether Lewis met him accidentally in 1803. Recognizing Colter's value, Lewis swiftly offered him five dollars a month to join his and William Clark's expedition. This chance encounter began Colter's career as an explorer.
President Thomas Jefferson commissioned the Lewis and Clark expedition to cross the Western United States, mapping and creating practical routes.
Colter wasn't immediately diligent. Often, he larked about drunk with other men. When his captains were away, he disobeyed orders. Once, he was court-martialed.
At the same time, Colter was one of the best hunters on the expedition. His skills fed the crew, and he routinely scouted new trails.
As he became increasingly focused, Lewis and Clark increased his responsibilities. When Clark needed to send a message to the absent Lewis, he chose Colter for the job. When horses went missing, Colter tracked them down.
Colter didn't mind hunting alone. During the winter of 1805-1806, he focused on elk. These big animals had become increasingly rare.
Cool under pressure
Even more critical was Colter's ability to stay cool in emergencies. Once his horse buckled beneath him during a river crossing. They drifted downstream, rolling and crashing over top of each other. Escaping with minor injuries, Colter even saved his rifle.
With Lewis and Clark, Colter was instrumental in finding passes through the Rocky Mountains. He was a focused hunter who enjoyed navigating uncharted territories. The wilderness was his preferred environment.
Three years later, the expedition was returning to Missouri, but Colter wasn’t ready to leave. Fur trappers Forrest Hancock and Joseph Dickson were headed toward Yellowstone and Colter was eager to join them. He requested a discharge from Lewis and Clark to join Hancock and Dickson. But the new trio didn't last long.
First, they turned back up the Missouri River toward Yellowstone country. For six weeks, they trapped beaver before disagreements forced Hancock and Colter to carry on without Dickson. Soon after, Colter split up from Hancock and continued solo down the Missouri River toward St. Louis.
Although he was content exploring alone, a fresh opportunity was on the horizon. But it came with risks.
Adventures in the fur trade
Manuel Lisa of the Missouri Fur Company stumbled upon Colter paddling alone up the Platte River. Lisa's party was heading up the Yellowstone River and he hired Colter to guide them down the Big Horn River. Lisa knew Colter’s skills would be critical to securing trade deals.
Colter first led the party to the Yellowstone River, where they built Fort Raymond. Soon after, he left alone to meet with local Indian groups and explain the fur company’s desire to trade.
With just a pack and rifle, Colter traveled over 800km through Crow country, building relationships with tribes as he went. He crossed the Wind River Mountains and the Teton Range during winter.
He witnessed geysers, braved sub-zero temperatures, and spent most of his time alone. When he arrived at Jackson Hole and Yellowstone Lake, he was likely the first white man to do so.
Returning to Fort Raymond, he described the geothermal activity and splendor of Yellowstone Lake to disbelieving ears. In 1808, he set off again, this time with colleague John Potts from the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
Blackfoot hostilities
The pair was traveling west toward the Three Forks of the Missouri when the first of two Indian attacks occurred.
As the men were leading 800 Crows back to Fort Raymond, a rival tribe of 1,500 Blackfoot set upon them. Despite a wounded leg, Colter continued to return fire while sheltering beneath scrub. Overpowered, the Blackfoot retreated and Colter returned to Fort Raymond to recover.
Blackfoot warriors were intolerant of white men. Years earlier, the Lewis and Clarke expedition had killed one who was found stealing a horse. Since then, the Blackfoot had sought revenge.
The following year, when Potts and Colter were hunting beavers, they knew they were at risk of Blackfoot attack. But the trapping was too good to pass up.
Carefully, they devised a plan to set traps after dark when the Blackfoot were sleeping. But one morning, while pulling out traps which they had set the evening before, a sound startled them.
Unsure if it was buffalo or Blackfoot, they continued paddling their canoe upstream. Within moments, they were surrounded by Blackfoot Indians beckoning from the river bank.
As Colter and Potts came to shore, a Blackfoot grabbed Potts' rifle. Colter acted quickly, wrestling the rifle free. He returned it to Potts, who then shot the Indian. Instantly, Potts received a fatal flurry of arrows.
Keeping his cool, Colter looked for a chance to bargain for his life. The Indians stripped him naked, discussing among themselves how to kill him.
Colter's run
Colter didn't know their language well but he understood enough. They wanted to save him for their chief to use as a moving target. Colter lied, explaining that he was a poor runner. He hoped that it would buy him an opportunity.
The chief set Colter loose with Indians running after him. For 10km, Colter ran naked through cactus fields, with more than 100 Blackfoot on his tail. He was such a swift runner that he eventually out-distanced them all, except for one spear-wielding man.
Wheeling around unexpectedly, Colter caught his pursuer by surprise. The Blackfoot man fell to the ground, snapping his spear. Colter picked up the broken lance and held it to the Indian’s throat.
But the rest of the Indians were approaching quickly, and Colter needed to make a quick escape. Drawing on all his speed and strength, he managed to outrun the tribe, eventually plunging into a river. He submerged and hid beneath driftwood, breathing pockets of air.
Colter waited until it was dark and the Blackfoot had abandoned the chase. He was naked and a long way from the nearest trading post. It took Colter a week to return to camp. When he did, he was sunburned and starving.
More close calls
His encounters with Blackfoot weren’t over. In the following years, they pursued him many times. Each time, he emerged a little more battered. Eventually, he tired of the chase and quit trapping altogether. He’d spent more than six years in the wild.
Eventually, he and Clark created a comprehensive map of the region they'd explored. It stood as a model of detail and accuracy for the next 75 years.
Colter tried to settle down to quiet farm life in Missouri with his new wife. But when the United States fought Great Britain in the War of 1812, a restless Colter enlisted. It was his final expedition. He succumbed to jaundice while at war.
Nowadays, we mostly remember Colter for his miraculous escape from the Blackfoot. He was also one of America's first true "Mountain Men".
More than a century later, in the 1930s, a farmer west of the Tetons discovered a stone with “John Colter" carved on one side and "1808" on the other. Historians still hotly debate whether the stone is authentic.
Here at ExWeb, when we’re not outdoors, we get our adventure fix by exploring social media and the wider interweb. Sometimes we’re a little too plugged in, and browsing interesting stories turn from minutes into hours. To nourish your own adventure fix, here are some of the best links we’ve discovered this week.
Death on a Medium-High Mountain: The case of 24-year-old Daniel Granberg, who died of high-altitude pulmonary edema earlier this month. His demise highlights the danger of altitudes well below the Himalayan "Death Zone”.
Over a Century Ago, This Arctic Expedition Ended in Disaster: National Geographic shows footage from a disastrous attempt to reach the North Pole in the early 1900s.
I Was Sliding Toward The Drop and Couldn’t Stop – The Writer Who Fell From a Mountain: It is every hiker and climber’s worst nightmare. In this excerpt from his new book, Simon Ingram recalls the day the wild peaks of Skye almost took his life.
Lucy Walker - The First Woman on the Matterhorn: In 1871, Liverpudlian Lucy Walker became the first woman to climb the Matterhorn. She managed the climb in cumbersome skirts and hobnail boots. More significantly, she also overcame a deeply embedded gender bias and inspired countless future female alpinists.
Tracking the masters of disguise
Patience Makes Perfect: How (and where) to Track a Snow Leopard: With one of the world’s densest populations of snow leopards, Mongolia is among the best places to see one in the wild. That is, if you can find them, writes Mark Daffey.
Mountain Guides Just Had Their Worst Season Ever in the Cascades: A series of extreme weather events stripped these glaciated mountains in the Lower 48 of their snowpack, leaving guides in the lurch.
World’s Largest Tree Wrapped in Fire-resistant Blanket as California Blaze Creeps Closer: Efforts are underway to protect General Sherman and other giant trees from wildfires threatening Sequoia National Park.
Hiking Through Minefields and a Pandemic in Uncharted Lands: A seemingly straightforward trek along the Via Adriatica during a sleepy Croatian summer became full of unforeseen events.
In 1719, James Knight and his 40 men overwintered on a small island in Hudson Bay and were never seen again. Were they captured by the French? Assimilated by the Inuit?
I’ve always been intrigued by Arctic explorers who seem to have vanished off the face of the earth. My various attempts to discover what might have happened to them have turned out to be acts of exploration themselves. I follow in their footsteps or paddle strokes to some off-the-map locale, perhaps suffer the same inclement weather that they may have suffered, and hang out with Native elders who often seem to know stories about them.
Among missing Arctic explorers, Sir John Franklin immediately comes to mind. With his sagging jowls and general portliness, not to mention his habit of constantly toting a Bible, he resembles a retired English vicar far more than an arctic explorer. Even so, his disappearance has made him a celebrity even among people who, if asked to find the Northwest Passage on a map, might scratch their heads in bafflement.
As for myself, I prefer lost explorers uncelebrated by the media, such as Captain James Knight. With his two ships the Albany and the Discovery, Knight left England in 1719 to search for that ever-popular geographic magnet, the Northwest Passage, then known as the Straits of Annian. He decided to overwinter on Marble Island, an uninhabited fastness of white quartzite in western Hudson Bay. After all, it had perhaps the best harbor in those parts. And neither he nor his 40 crewmen were ever heard from again. Were they killed by Inuit? Assimilated by Inuit? Did they fall through the ice while trying to make it to the mainland? Or might they have come down with some virulent disease?
Once upon an earlier time, I joined Bill Gawor from Rankin Inlet and Fred Ford from Baker Lake on an expedition to Marble Island. We investigated the Knight house site, which consisted of a foundation and numerous scattered bricks, but found nothing that might have given us a clue about Knight and his missing men. We searched for but did not find a graveyard, although explorer Samuel Hearne claimed to have found a large one on the island in 1767. At one point Bill found a stanchion of stout English oak that may (or may not) have belonged to one of Knight’s ships.
Marble Island’s whiteness can easily camouflage a polar bear, with the result that a person might think they’re stepping on quartzite, but then that quartzite will rise up and smite them. Thus the three of us carried rifles with us almost all of the time. At one point I saw a large white form seemingly moving in my direction, and I quickly raised my rifle. The white form turned out to be snow being blown off one of our tents by a typically vigorous Hudson Bay wind. Later Fred scared off a polar bear with a warning shot from his rifle, then remarked with a grin, “I wonder if a polar bear killed off all of Knight’s men…”
After a week on the island, we were no closer to solving the Knight mystery than we were when we arrived, so we decided to call it quits. In the mainland village of Rankin Inlet, I queried Inuit elders about Captain Knight. One of these elders, Olli Ittinuar, gave me a story that he’d heard as a young man. Here’s an abbreviated version of that story:
In the spring, a large ship came to Marble Island just as Knight and his men were getting ready to leave. There was a big battle between the men in the ship and the men on the island. Some of Knight’s men were killed during the battle, and the rest were forced aboard the ship, which then sailed away. Who might have been the masters of this ship Olli didn’t know.
Right away I thought of the French, who were making sneak attacks on English forts in Hudson Bay at this time. Let’s imagine a French ship, more or less a privateer, arriving on Marble Island…and who should the ship’s crew encounter but Captain James Knight, who’d twice seized forts in Hudson Bay from the French, and George Berley, who’d fought off a French attack on Fort Albany in 1704. The scenario might have been very similar to the one Olli described to me. Likewise, the remains of the Discovery and the Albany have been found positioned very close together at the bottom of Marble Island’s East End Harbor, a fact that might suggest they’d been scuttled by the French.
Olli told me that he had no idea where the ship ended up. Might it have been wrecked by ice or the notoriously bad weather of Hudson Bay? Might it have transported Knight and his men to North Africa and sold them as slaves to the Berbers, a common practice by French privateers? If this last explanation is correct, then there might be Algerians or Tunisians today with genes from individuals who overwintered in the Arctic a long time ago. Or might Olli’s story have simply been a mesh of folklore-like tales told to him by elders?
Among such a plethora of questions, only the Arctic itself has the answer, and at the moment it’s not telling.
The haughty Spanish explorer had a spiritual awakening during his years of captivity and hardship in the New World.
The survival of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca is nothing short of a miracle. This Spaniard, who explored the American Southwest, survived thanks to good luck and possibly divine intervention. He was one of four who withstood the deadly failures of the 1527 Narvaez Expedition, a voyage that killed hundreds.
Cabeza de Vaca was born in 1490 into a hidalgo family, a low rank of Spanish nobility. His grandfather was the renowned Pedro de Vera, conqueror of the Canary Islands. In his youth, he served the Duke of Medina Sidonia as a page boy before fighting in the Italian Wars in the early 1500s.
Afterward, he continued to build up his military experience in the Revolt of the Comuneros and the French invasion of Navarre in 1521. His dedication to the Spanish crown and experience in warfare eventually paid off. He became treasurer of the 1527 Narvaez Expedition, led by conquistador Panfilo de Narvaez.
This expedition’s goal was to explore and colonize the land from Mexico to Florida. Narvaez set out with 600 slaves, soldiers, sailors, wives, and children in June 1527. Their problems began after arriving in Hispaniola in August, when over 140 soldiers deserted the expedition.
All hell broke loose
They continued on to Cuba when all hell broke loose. Vicious hurricanes sank their ships, drowning around 60 men and several horses. Cabeza de Vaca managed to acquire new ships and recruits in Cuba, but the recruits soon attempted to leave.
It seemed that nature too conspired against them. Their ships ran aground on sandbanks on the southern coast of Cuba, forcing them to remain there for almost a month. Eventually, a storm allowed them to break free from the shoals holding their vessels hostage.
After enduring more storms, strong currents, and brutal winds for several weeks, they managed to sail into what is now Tampa Bay. During this temporary respite, they met natives who gave them food in exchange for trinkets. But the amicable dealings were short-lived. Attempts at forced conversions to Christianity soured relations.
Splitting the expedition
Narvaez split the expedition into separate sea and land components, a suicidal notion that Cabeza de Vaca strongly opposed. Nevertheless, the stubborn Narvaez took 300 men on land while 100 men and several women sailed north in search of a natural harbor.
Cabeza de Vaca joined Narvaez on land. Rations quickly ran out. Starvation ensued. They wandered for a couple of weeks before stumbling on villages, including some which were not so welcoming.
Natives attacked the hapless expedition. Those who survived were on the brink of mutiny before Cabeza de Vaca convinced them to stick to the cause. They took time to hide from the natives and rebuild their boats.
Narvaez had taken ill, making Cabeza de Vaca the de facto leader of the remaining 242 men. In September 1528, they started sailing but yet another storm blew Cabeza de Vaca and his party of 80 to Galveston, Texas. Meanwhile, Narvaez and his crew sailed into the unknown and were never seen again.
Escape from captivity
For the next four years, Cabeza de Vaca and the other survivors were enslaved by the Karankawa and Coahuiltecan tribes. Cabeza de Vaca, a Moorish slave named Estevanico, Andrés Dorantes de Carranza, and Alonso del Castillo Maldonado were the only ones who managed escape their captors in 1532.
Cabeza and the others explored Texas and Mexico, integrating themselves with natives who took them in. During this time, some natives came to believe that the Spaniards possessed healing abilities. The men somehow convinced the natives of their power of “curing” ills by simply making the Sign of the Cross and saying prayers. Cabeza de Vaca also performed the New World’s first surgery. He even supposedly brought a man back from the dead.
News of their miracles spread to other tribes and the afflicted came in droves to these mystic foreigners, paying them in prickly pears and other foods. They even offered themselves as slaves.
Children of the sun
Their reputation as “children of the sun” was not just a thriving business that helped them gain the respect of the local people. It became personal for Cabeza de Vaca. In his account of the failed expedition and their trials in the New World, his worldview changed from its superior, cold outlook on natives to that of fascination and sympathy toward them. His writings reflected a new understanding of their cultural practices. He even learned their languages.
The natives trusted him so much that he convinced them to convert to Christianity to protect themselves from evil. He became a very different person, more caring and open-minded, from the one who left Spain back in 1527.
Cabeza de Vaca had transitioned from trader to healer and had a big following of natives with him at all times. He and his men traveled to San Miguel in 1536. They sailed back to Spain the following year. In 1542, he published his account of his tribulations and explorations, called La Relación. It recounted his discovery of the American Southwest and its plants and wildlife, including buffalo and the Mississippi River.
His account, the first written record of the Southwest, has polarized historians. Many believe his experiences are exaggerated and inaccurate. However, his role in exploring the Southwest paved the way for others to follow.
He returned to the Americas in 1540 and was appointed governor of what is now Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina. However, he was arrested for his sympathies toward the native people and sent back to Spain for trial in 1545. Luckily, he was acquitted.
About 50 years ago, an obscure little book called Interlinear to Cabeza de Vaca gave a fictional account of the explorer's spiritual awakening. It is a minor classic, worth tracking down.
Isabelle Eberhardt explored North Africa disguised as a man. The enigmatic Swiss-Russian writer relished Algeria's underbelly. She seduced men, narrowly escaped assassination, and abused drugs and alcohol. Long after her ravaged body finally broke down in the Sahara, she was championed for living out her dreams, regardless of gender norms.
Eberhardt was born in 1877. At that time, female sexual experimentation was, shall we say, not a thing. This did not deter Eberhardt. Dressed as a man, she shattered traditional gender expectations.
Eberhardt's stepfather introduced her to boyish habits. Presumably, he did not wish society to treat her as a second-class citizen. He dressed Eberhardt in boy's clothes and cropped her hair short. Eberhardt came to prefer identifying as a boy.
Identified as a boy but romanticized Arab men
But her upbringing lacked childish adventures. She and her siblings worked long, laborious days on her stepfather's estate. Eberhardt's relationship with her stepfather was always strained. Eberhardt dreamed of one day escaping Geneva. She became fascinated with North Africa and the Sahara. She romanticized Arab men.
Through a French-Algerian penpal in the Sahara, Eberhardt learned about Saharan life. She hung on every word, using the information to publish short stories.
She published her first story in 1895 under the pseudonym Nicolas Podolinsky. Infernalia is about a medical student's physical attraction to a dead woman. Next, she published Vision du Moghreb, a story about North African religious life.
Considering that her information was second-hand, her stories were remarkably detailed. They captured the interest of French-Algerian photographer, Louis David. Eberhardt confided to David that she dreamed of escaping Geneva and he gave Eberhardt the opportunity.
In 1897, Eberhardt and her mother moved to Algeria. David welcomed Eberhardt into his home.
Disguise and vice
In Algeria, Eberhardt assumed a new identity: Si Mahmoud Saadi. She dressed, acted, and wrote as an Arab man. Wasting no time, she wound her way through darkened dens, drinking with sailors, smoking hashish, and seducing men. Quickly, her relationship with David soured.
Writing remained an important part of her life. She penned the first draft of her novel, Trimardeur. Then Yasmina, a story about a young Bedouin woman who falls in love with a French officer. But she blew the little money she made through writing on hashish and alcohol.
In 1897, Eberhardt’s mother died. Overcome with grief, she claimed she too wanted to die. When her stepfather arrived for the funeral service, he coldly suggested that Eberhardt do just that.
The event irreparably severed Eberhardt's family. One of her brothers committed suicide. Augustin, her closest brother, had been estranged from her in recent years. Her stepfather banished her sister after she married a suitor that the family didn’t approve of. Finally, her stepfather died before he could relocate to Algeria. Eberhardt was now free from family constraints and pursued life as she pleased.
Relentlessly, she roamed the Sahara. Her addiction to drugs and alcohol worsened. Consequences didn't concern her.
Turns to spirituality
Fair-skinned with a slim physique, Eberhardt's shaved hair and boyish clothes were not enough to fool most people, and European settlers shunned her for mingling with Arabs. Eberhardt was an outcast.
Already feeling alienated, she found solace in spirituality and religion. She sought out the Qadri religious sect, an order combining Islamic mysticism with pre-Islamic beliefs. The leaders granted her membership, recognizing the depth of her interest in Islam. For Eberhardt, the sect provided a sense of community but aroused further suspicion from the French administration. They already thought she was a spy, sent by the English to foment anti-French sentiment in the region.
In early 1900, Eberhardt met a young Algerian officer, Slimene Ehnni. She fell hopelessly in love. He was the first suitor she felt comfortable enough with to resume a feminine role.
Together, the couple traversed Algeria. Their partnership furthered speculation that Eberhardt was working undercover. The following year, Ehnni received a new posting. It was a deliberate attempt to separate the couple. For Eberhardt, more trouble was around the corner.
Near-assassination
While Eberhardt was with the Qadri, a member of a rival sect burst into the courtyard wielding a saber. The assassin's saber blow was aimed at her head, but a wire clothesline deflected the blade, narrowly saving her life. Instead, the blow almost completely severed her arm.
Eberhardt believed the attack had been the work of the French administration, which had long despised her. The government sentenced her attacker, Abdallah Ben Mohammed, to a life of hard labor. But they ordered Eberhardt to leave Algeria. As a foreigner, she had no choice but to follow orders.
Eberhardt fled to Marseilles and Ehnni joined shortly after. There, they married in Muslim and civil ceremonies. The marriage entitled her to French citizenship.
Believing God had spared her life for a greater purpose, Eberhardt renewed her spirituality. The event also restored her confidence in her writing. A diary entry read: “Before, I had to wait sometimes for months for the right moods to write. Now I can write more or less whenever I want.”
Soon after the attack, an Algerian newspaper invited Eberhardt to contribute as a war correspondent. They sent Eberhardt to cover clashes between Berber tribes and French forces on the Morocco-Algeria border. Here, she met French officer Hubert Lyautey.
Becomes a spy
Once again living as Saadi, she and Lyautey became close friends and confidants. Eberhardt had been anti-colonial, but Lyautey swayed her. She believed that his diplomatic focus might be good for the region and acted as an intermediary between him and the locals. She even carried out intelligence missions for him.
But Eberhardt’s lifestyle was catching up with her. At just 27, she had already lost all her teeth. She was riddled with health issues, permanently pained from her wounded arm, and had contracted malaria. Years of substance abuse had taken a toll. Time was running out. Pain and death didn't worry her. Her spirituality instilled the belief that pain was not suffering.
In 1904, Eberhardt rented a small house in the Algerian village of Ain Sefra. She asked her husband, whom she had not seen for months, to join her. The day after he arrived, a flash flood swept down from the mountains and demolished their house. The flood swept her husband away, although he survived. Eberhardt was not so lucky. Her body was found crushed beneath the ruins of their home.
Eberhardt's lifestyle had swayed between vice and spirituality, between hedonism and journalism. After she died, her manuscripts inspired plays, films, an opera, and the New York musical, The Nomad.
Her celebrity comes not from her stories, but from her uncompromising lifestyle. She experienced parts of North Africa rarely witnessed by European women. She challenged the social norms of sexual expression. For Eberhardt, gender created no barrier that could not be overcome.
Exploring West Africa in the guise of a trader was far from normal for a 19th-century English woman. But not for Mary Kingsley.
Kingsley lived with local people, met tribes rumored to indulge in cannibalism, and traipsed through previously uncharted jungles. Later, she published her unconventional views on African customs and became a celebrity. However, she disliked the narrative of the "empowered woman" that the press foisted upon her.
Kingsley’s isolated upbringing acclimatized her to a life of adventure. Her parents wed just four days before her birth. Her mother, who had been her father’s cook, didn’t fit into his aristocratic social circle. He traveled extensively, sometimes for years at a time, and was seldom home. Kingsley’s mother claimed to be ill and imprisoned herself at home. She kept a silent house. The shutters stayed permanently closed.
Her father's library was her most precious resource
Kingsley's father chose not to formally educate her. Instead, she cared for her mother. Kingsley found solace in the books that her father collected during his travels, stacked floor to ceiling in his library. When he returned home, Kingsley marveled at the wonderful travel stories he’d share.
"The whole of my childhood and youth was spent at home, in the house and garden," Kingsley explained in Katherine Frank’s A Voyager Out. "The living outside world I saw little of and cared less for. I felt myself out of place at the few parties I ever had the chance of going to, and I deservedly was unpopular with my own generation...The truth was I had a great amusing world of my own [that] other people did not know or care about—that was the books in my father's library."
Book smarts seemed to run in the family. Kingsley's uncle authored the famous children's novel The Water Babies. Her father was partway through writing his own book when he died suddenly in his sleep.
When Kingsley’s mother died within weeks of her father, she was free to embark on any unconventional journey her imagination could conjure.
Off to Africa
In 1893, dressed in Victorian spinster attire (a high-necked black blouse, long black woolen skirt, buttoned leather boots, and small sealskin hat), she set off for West Africa.
"You have no right to go about Africa in things you would be ashamed to be seen in at home,” she later wrote of her formal attire.
Africa was an unlikely choice for a European woman. This “white man’s grave” was not considered a safe destination for male visitors, much less for women. Indeed, those who traveled there were usually wives of government officials or missionaries. Always, a husband escorted them.
Kingsley was direct, poised, and confident. Motivated by the prospect of finishing her father’s book, studying law, and investigating African religions, she wasn’t concerned about potential risks.
Initially, she spent four months living with locals in Sierra Leone, learning their customs. Realizing that local villages might be more accepting of a trader, she promptly took up this new profession. Trading allowed her to gain access to otherwise inaccessible people and places while remaining independent.
When she returned to England, Kingsley accepted a book deal and was granted funding for her next trip. In 1894, she returned to Africa.
Second major journey
This time Kingsley planned to explore the Ogowe River, which ran through the Congo's Gabon area. The area was largely unknown in England, and her journey involved wading through dense rainforest in which dwelt little-known tribes.
Kingsley did not shy away from confrontations. Only one European man had ventured through the area before, and he had vanished. But Kingsley believed that traveling as a trader would make her less threatening.
Accompanied by several men and an interpreter, Kingsley traveled more than 100km through the dense forest of the Ogowe River region. When she met with aggressive tribesmen wielding weapons, she resolved the conflict with ease. Eventually, Kingsley won the respect of these Fang people.
"A certain sort of friendship soon arose between the Fang and me," she wrote. "We each recognized that we belonged to that same section of the human race with whom it is better to drink than to fight."
On one occasion, while sleeping in the house of a Fang chieftain, she noticed a foul odor. Upon investigation, she came across a bag with a human hand, three big toes, four eyes, two ears, and other human remains.
First European to explore the area
Kingsley carried a knife and revolver but never used them. She emerged for her expedition as the first European to successfully explore the area. To her credit, she didn’t take kindly to the idea she had “discovered” its people.
Because of her unconventional upbringing, Kingsley was never one to follow the crowd. She successfully confronted some of the toughest tribes known to man. She was comfortable challenging popular European views on African customs too.
Kingsley thought that colonialism was harmful to Africans, that witch doctors were beneficial, polygamy necessary, and domestic slavery not entirely bad. At a time when Europeans believed Africans needed both Christianity and colonialism for survival, Kingsley publicly expressed the opposite.
Her interest in traditional African religious practices led her to a chance encounter with another European woman. Mary Slessor was also traveling Africa without a husband.
Slessor had chosen to focus on stopping the tradition of twin killing in Okoyong, an area of modern Nigeria. Locals believed that twins were the result of an encounter with the devil. Without knowing which of the twins to sacrifice, both were often killed. So was the mother.
When the women met, Slessor was caring for a mother and one surviving twin. Kingsley and Slessor became fast friends and confidants.
Uninterested in women's suffrage
Kingsley's writings, on her travels and African customs, were so articulate and profound that she became a celebrity. Some in the media linked her to the European feminist movement, but Kingsley was uninterested in women’s suffrage. She was interested in Africa.
Kingsley didn’t just hobnob around Africa. She engrossed herself entirely. She canoed past crocodiles, encountered supposed cannibal tribes, and traipsed steamy jungles. To fund her adventures, she bartered rum, gin, and fish hooks. She collected beetles and fish specimens for British museums. Some fish species were new discoveries and were later named after her. Once she returned with a previously unknown snake and eight new species of insect.
When the Boer war broke out, Kingsley was dismayed. She volunteered as a nurse in Cape Town. But caring for injured patients in a dirty makeshift hospital took its toll.
Typhoid ravaged the hospital and struck Kingsley down. Knowing she was short on time, she expressed her preference to die alone and be buried at sea. She died two months after she had arrived in Cape Town, at aged 37. Her coffin was cast to the ocean floor off Cape Point.
I have a strange habit of losing whatever I happen to put on my feet. Once I tried to throw my boots across a river in a remote place in the Yukon so I could then wade across. While I succeeded in throwing one of the boots across the river, the other boot landed squarely in the river, floated downstream, and disappeared.
Another time I climbed an icy mountain in Iceland, and upon reaching the summit, I decided to shake the snow off my crampons. I shook one of the crampons a bit too vigorously, and it flew off my boot and bounced down the mountain. My Icelandic climbing partner carried me much of the way down the mountain on his back.
More recently, I was leading a nature walk outside Anchorage, Alaska, when — perhaps to exhibit my expertise as an outdoorsman — I tried to leap across a brook. Instead of landing on the other side, I landed in the middle of it, whereupon some of the folks on the walk cheered. One man shouted, “Terrific performance! Do it again!”
Needless to say, my boots were soaked from sole to shaft. That night I put them on the mat outside my motel room so they could get at least partially dry. The next morning, they were gone. Stolen, I assumed.
“I’ll drive you to a store where you can buy some boots,” said my friend Ted Mala, an Inupiat elder and director of traditional healing at the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage. He also happened to be the son of Ray Mala, star of a 1933 film entitled Eskimo.
I warned Ted that my feet were so wide that I often had considerable difficulty finding boots or shoes that fit them. He merely nodded.
Our first stop was Sam’s Club, of which Ted was a member. Not surprisingly, none of the boots fit my feet. Then we visited a sporting goods store called Big Ray’s. No luck. Next was an Army-Navy type store located on Anchorage’s so-called Eskimo strip. Still no luck. Then we went to an outdoor store whose products were designed for mountaineers, but it would seem that mountaineers don’t have very wide feet.
In front of one store sat a drunk singing a ballad about a woman named Nellie, who “has hair all over her belly.” I stopped to listen to the song, but Ted took my arm, and we went into the store. No luck there, either.
“We’re not going to find the right boot size for me,” I said.
“I’m a Native person,” Ted replied, “and we haven’t survived this long by giving up.”
At last, we visited a small shoe store on the outskirts of town. The owner appeared to understand my dilemma, and he retreated to the store’s storage room, then came out with boots that were a perfect fit. “I have very wide feet myself,” the owner, an Algerian man, explained to me.
For his services, I treated Ted to dinner, and when I got back to my motel, I saw my other boots outside the door to my room. I learned later that the motel’s cleaning woman thought I wanted them dried, so she took them and put them in the motel’s dryer.
Now I possessed two pairs of boots. The first pair was 10 years old and looked at least twice that old. The second pair, although spanking new, reminded me — and, to this day, still reminds me — how northern indigenous people have survived in habitats much riskier than urban Anchorage, Alaska.
In 2009, two men drifted helplessly inside an icebox for 25 days. Miraculously, they survived a disaster that killed their 18 crewmates.
The two Burmese men had been working on a commercial fishing boat. The day had started innocuously enough but turned into a nightmare when the weather changed. Rough seas splintered their 9m wooden vessel. The boat sank, and the crew was forced into the ocean.
The two men found a 1.5m square icebox that usually stored fish. Seeking refuge, they clambered inside. The rest of the crew (mostly Thai nationals) had no flotation devices.
“We saw a Thai man floating past us but we couldn't reach him to help,” one survivor told the rescue team.
There had been no emergency beacons or life rafts on the fishing boat. The men were now at the mercy of the ocean, praying for rescue.
“We drifted for hundreds of miles, and although we think some ships saw us, they didn't come to help,” said one of the survivors. “Even when the fishing boat we were on sent out distress signals, no one responded. When the boat sank we had to grab what we could or we would drown.”
Drank rainwater
For 25 days, they survived on rainwater that pooled at the bottom of their icebox and ate chunks of fish that had been left inside. Wind and waves threatened to capsize them as they drifted.
In a stroke of luck, an Australian Coast Guard aircraft spotted the icebox during a routine flight. The shipwrecked men removed their shirts and waved furiously to the crew above. The Coast Guard then radioed a rescue helicopter to retrieve them.
“They were ecstatic to see us,” reported the helicopter pilot.
The men (aged 22 and 25) thought they had been approximately 300km off the coast of Australia when their ordeal started. They may have drifted hundreds of kilometers before being winched to safety 110km northwest of Horn Island.
Onboard the helicopter, the parched fishermen downed almost two liters of water each. They were lucky to be alive. All 18 of their crewmates were presumed dead and no further searches were conducted.
"The information [the men] provided to us was that they witnessed other crew members in the water, none of whom had a flotation device, so we've done an assessment and we don't believe anybody would be able to survive 25 days actually in the water," said one of the rescuers.
The survivors were hungry and dehydrated but otherwise in good health. They were released from the hospital the following day.
The Torres Strait between Australia and Papua New Guinea is fished both legally and illegally. It is unknown if the crew was permitted to fish when their boat sank.
For German explorer and self-taught naturalist Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Leichhardt, the Australian Outback was "a challenge to survival, for adventure and pioneering.” He took on the challenge, fearlessly advancing into the red desert interior of Northern and Central Australia.
However, his contributions to biology, geology, and geography suddenly stopped when Leichhardt and his team vanished in 1848. To this day, his fate remains a mystery. But some tantalizing clues remain as to what may have transpired.
A driven man
Leichhardt was a resourceful, passionate, driven man, with an affinity for natural science. Between 1831 and 1837, he studied languages, medicine, philosophy, biology, and geology at the Universities of Berlin, Gottingen, and the Royal College of Surgeons. Leichhardt had a reputation for pushing himself too hard and suffered bouts of anxiety and depression. He elected not to pursue an official degree, and instead preferred to get hands-on experience in the field.
He arrived in Australia in 1842. Here, he studied plants and rocks in the Hunter River Valley before setting off on an expedition from Darling Downs in Queensland to Port Essington in the Northern Territory (1844-1846).
On this journey, Leichhardt and his company of 10 traveled 8,000km. During their journey, Leichhardt named Seven Emu Creek and discovered the Mitchell, Lynd, and Burdekin rivers. Their journey took so long that the Australian public presumed that they were dead. When they reappeared in Sydney in March 1846, the public greeted them as conquering heroes. The government awarded Leichhardt a £1,000 grant for future adventures.
The expedition was a huge success, but it was not without incident. Leichhardt’s friend and fellow explorer John Gilbert died in an Aboriginal attack during the expedition. In his journal, Leichhardt explained that Gilbert “was stooping to get out of his tent” when a spear fatally pierced him.
Second expedition
Leichhardt's second expedition, in December 1846, was not so successful. The plan was to travel from the Darling Downs to Perth with 14 men, including researchers and several Aboriginals. Harsh weather, malaria, and food shortages resulted in a near mutiny. Leichhardt was not prepared for these challenges, and they turned back five months into their planned two-year expedition.
According to several sources, Leichhardt was more concerned with fame than with the well-being of the company. Historian Dan Sprod believes that the expedition’s failure was down to environmental forces and poor decision-making.
After this fiasco and a bout of malaria, Leichhardt was determined to get back into the field. He embarked on a smaller expedition to the Condamine River and prepared for a third expedition, which would become his last.
The disappearance
In April 1848, Leichhardt organized a two-year journey from the Condamine River to the Swan River. They left the Condamine River in force. The party included five Europeans (including Leichhardt), two Aboriginal guides named Wommai and Billy Bombat, 50 bullocks, 20 mules, and seven horses. The party was last seen on April 3, 1848, at Cogoon in Darling Downs. It would be four years before a search began.
Clues
Subsequent expeditions in the area found a series of trees marked with the letter "L". Perhaps Leichhardt marked these trees to indicate his path.
In 1851, the government of New South Wales sent out a search party under Hovenden Hely. They traveled from Brisbane to the Maranoa district. Along the way, they heard that Aboriginals had slaughtered white men and their animals west of Mount Abundance. They eventually came upon an "L" carved over the letters "XVA" on a tree.
In 1858, explorer Augustus Gregory went to find Leichhardt. He too found an "L" tree near the Barcoo River. Six years later, a man named Duncan McIntyre found two more "L" trees near the Flinders River, along with two decomposed horses. People continued to find these "L" trees in a westerly direction until the 1950s.
In 1895, David Carnegie crossed the Great Sandy Desert from south to north. He came across a group of Aboriginals in Ildawongga who had part of a saddle, a tent peg, and the lid of a matchbox. Could these have been some of Leichhardt’s possessions?
In 1900, an Aboriginal stockman named Jacky found the most intriguing piece of evidence. A brass plate inscribed “Ludwig Leichhardt 1848” was attached to a gun beside an "L"-marked boab tree near Sturt Creek. Chemical analyses determined that the plate was made sometime in the 19th century, contained sulfur residue from gunpowder, and bore signs of fire damage. The gun itself was partially burned. The Royal Geographical Society believed that the objects were likely genuine.
Other hints
Other clues included folk tales of mixed Aboriginal and European children, bullocks roaming in the area, horse tracks where Leichhardt presumably disappeared, and Aboriginals who claimed to have seen dead horses and riders. In 1889, Aboriginals living on the Ninety Mile Beach at the edge of the Great Sandy Desert told a man named Alec McPhee of an incident 40 years prior. They had tracked three or four white men on horses but found them all dead. They likely died of starvation and thirst.
Historian Darrell Lewis has spent 50 years as an archeological researcher in Australia’s Northern Territory and has also attempted to unravel the mystery. While Lewis was unable to find any "L" trees at Sturt Creek, he dove into the oral history and existing physical evidence (including Leichhart’s personal letters). He believes that Leichhardt’s men died in the Great Sandy Desert.
He suggests that Leichhardt followed Sturt Creek to Lake Gregory and kept pressing forward, while some of the men may have turned back. Considering his inability to accept failure, it is very possible Leichhardt trudged through the desert until his death. However, this is still speculation, and the mystery endures.
Michael Rockefeller disappeared under mysterious circumstances in November 1961 while on an ethnological expedition to New Guinea. His family’s fame, the circumstances leading to his disappearance, and the disturbing clues into his likely demise caused an international sensation. His death attracts curious minds to this day.
An unlikely passion
Michael Rockefeller was born on May 18, 1938, into one of the world’s wealthiest and most influential families. He was the fifth child of businessman and eventual U.S. Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. The family had a hand in many of America’s institutions, even helping to develop major cities like New York.
But money and power did not seem to appeal to the last child of Nelson Rockefeller and his first wife Mary. Michael did not have the same proclivity for business as his father. He was more interested in other cultures, traveling, and art. As a teenager, his father founded the Museum of Primitive Art, and the art of indigenous groups fascinated Michael.
At his father’s behest, he attended Harvard University to study history and economics. There, he met filmmaker Robert Gardner and joined him on an expedition to western New Guinea, at the time a Dutch colony.
Michael served as a sound man for the documentary Dead Birds, a collaboration with the Harvard Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology. It was Michael’s first taste of the life he wanted, a life of exploration.
Michael’s father had named him a trustee of the Museum of Primitive Art. He saw his first trip to New Guinea as an opportunity to study the artwork of the Asmat people. He had heard that they were great artists.
With another team member, he launched a sub-expedition to meet the Asmat. He hoped to feature their art in the museum back in New York. The sub-expedition was a success, Michael was fascinated, and determined to acquire some cultural artifacts. In his letters, he referred to the Asmat as a “puzzle” to be solved.
His own expedition
Not long after his first trip, he returned to New Guinea for his own expedition. Rene Wassing, a Dutch anthropologist commissioned by the Dutch colonial government, accompanied him, along with two Asmat teenagers. They visited Asmat villages and traded with the residents to acquire an array of spears, drums, horns, and shields with intricate designs. However, the fruitful trip soon turned sour.
On November 17, Michael, Rene, and the Asmat teenagers were crossing the 20km-wide mouth of the Betsj River when their pontoon boat capsized in bad weather and cross-currents. The Asmat boys managed to swim to shore and set off to find help. Michael and Rene spent an entire night clinging to the overturned boat. Fearing they would drift further out to sea, Michael eventually decided to swim for the distant shore. He stripped down to his underwear, tied two empty 18-liter cans to his waist as floaties, and swam for it. He was never seen again.
Rene was later rescued by Dutch authorities.
A frantic search for the lost Rockefeller began. Michael’s father, stepmother, and twin sister traveled to the island, and the Dutch government searched for him with planes, helicopters, and boats. But after two weeks, the search ended. In 1964, Michael was declared dead. The official cause of death was drowning.
Theories
Though officially drowned, there are other popular theories. Michael was a strong swimmer and the two Asmat guides had made it to shore. Could Michael have been attacked by sharks or crocodiles? Had he made it but been eaten by cannibals? Perhaps he had run off to live with the natives? The official scenario of drowning sounds the most plausible.
Not long after his disappearance, Rockefeller’s mother and the Dutch government sent investigators to New Guinea. They found skulls that bore marks of headhunting, a grisly practice of the Asmat. These skulls had supposedly been in the possession of the tribesmen. However, they were never tested for authenticity, and the Rockefeller family never affirmed that they had found Michael's remains.
Some people believed that Michael had given up his family’s lavish lifestyle to live among the Asmat. He greatly admired them and their way of life. However, the Asmat were not welcoming and often viewed white people as evil spirits. It is unlikely they would have taken him in.
Cover-up?
Another theory involves a cover-up. Some media outlets published rumors that Michael had been killed and eaten by cannibals. New Guinea's colonial government was in trouble, the Dutch had handed half of the island to Indonesia, and they struggled to maintain their power in the region. If cannibals had indeed murdered Rockefeller, it would undermine the government’s legitimacy and authority in the region, or so goes the conspiracy theory.
In 1969, a journalist named Milt Machlin traveled to the village of Otsjanep and came across a possible motive for murder. He heard about the 1958 massacre of Asmat leaders by Dutch officers. The Asmat believe in the restoration of balance, and revenge killings can prevent wronged spirits from tormenting the village. This led Machlin to surmise that after Rockefeller made it to shore, the Asmat murdered him.
Decades later, American anthropologist Tobias Schneebaum claimed he spoke to some villagers in Otsjanep. They claimed to have cannibalized Rockefeller. A Catholic priest named Cornelius Van Kessel, who knew the Asmat well and assisted in the search, saw tibia and thigh bones decorating tribesmen’s spears that supposedly belonged to Rockefeller.
Case reopened
In 2014, American journalist Carl Hoffman embarked on a journey to Otsjanep to find answers. He too was told of the 1958 massacre. Hoffman spoke to locals, showing photographs of Michael. He heard stories suggesting that Michael reached shore, only to be brutally killed by several tribesmen in retribution for that 1958 massacre.
Hoffman became close with a villager named Amates who recounted the story of a white tourist who was killed around that time. Despite the subject being slightly taboo in the village, the villagers looked at the photos Hoffman provided and pointed out some men who carried human bones. These were the same men Father Cornelius Van Kessel had met previously. However, it is important to note that no one from the village officially confessed to the murder.
Furthermore, not long after Rockefeller’s demise, a deadly cholera outbreak killed 70 people in the village. Hoffman suggests that some villagers believe that it was punishment for murder. The compelling evidence does not stop there. Hoffman recalls seeing a man reenact the murder of a white man, while cryptically telling the journalist to never speak of the event again.
Hoffman returned to the U.S. and published his book, Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism and Michael Rockefeller’s Tragic Quest for Primitive Art. Hoffman’s insight is considered the most in-depth analysis of Rockefeller's disappearance. Still, he did not come to a firm conclusion.
Today, no one knows where the bone fragments are, and the skulls found in the 1960s were never tested for Rockefeller’s DNA. The Rockefeller family doesn't seem interested in reopening the case.
Michael Rockefeller’s legacy lives on in New York. There are 200 artifacts currently on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, in a wing named after him.
Born in the Czech region of Moravia in 1868, Jan Welzl was an early master of what’s called creative nonfiction. Or perhaps he was simply a master fictionalizer in his books about the Arctic. In the most popular of those books, Thirty Years in the Golden North, he describes Inuit in the New Siberian Islands electing him their chieftain…although the New Siberia Islands never had any Inuit inhabitants. Never any year-round inhabitants at all, in fact. In another work, The Quest for Polar Treasure, he describes 36-foot tall octopi whose favorite occupation is killing unwary members of our own species.
Whether Welzl actually visited, much less explored, the places he described in his books is debatable. But there was one northern place he did visit: Dawson, which was the Yukon’s largest town at the time. Not only did he visit it, but he spent the last sixteen years of his life there. While other Dawsonites were searching for gold, Welzl occupied himself trying to create a perpetual motion machine from old beer cans and bicycle parts. To individuals who visited his cabin, he would point to the machine and, in broken English, say, “She go up, she go down, she go ‘yah, yah, yah!’”
Welzl also regaled Dawsonites who visited his cabin with stories about his experiences in the North. For instance, he would allude to his discovery of a race of pygmy Inuit who’d arrived in Siberia on a meteor from Mars. Or he’d say that kangaroos would make better sled animals than dogs — a pity there were so few of them in the Arctic. In the end, he died not as a result of an attack by a giant octopus, but from a heart attack in 1948.
Welzl is one of the reasons why a large number of Czechs visit Dawson as tourists and sometimes end up living there. For he became an iconic figure in their Soviet-run, perhaps Soviet-ruined country in the 1950s. In their minds, he pursued the life of his choice, without any rules imposed on him by officialdom. And in passages like the following one, from Thirty Years in the Golden North, he seems to be criticizing Soviet rule of Czechoslovakia well before that rule existed: “There is true liberty up North. Nobody is limited in his freedom…Whatever you see, you can go after…there is nothing to stop you.”
The Velvet Revolution put an end to Soviet rule in the Czech Republic, but not an end to the Czech enthusiasm for Jan Welzl. In his hometown of Zabreh, the statue of Stalin was torn down, and a statue of Welzl was placed on the same pedestal that Stalin had previously occupied.
Czechs have long been making pilgrimages to Welzl’s grave in Dawson’s Catholic cemetery. When I visited the grave myself in 1992, someone had placed a boot on it, doubtless a tribute to Welzl’s wandering habit, and the cross was so laden with wreaths that it seemed in danger of toppling over. But this cross did not mark Welzl’s grave. Apparently, an early Czech visitor had gone to the cemetery in search of Welzl’s grave, and not being able to find it, he found an unmarked cross, wrote “Jan Welzl” on it, and stuck it in the ground. Welzl’s admirers were probably laying their wreaths on the grave of an itinerant Italian laborer named Peter Fagetti.
A new grave was since been determined to be Welzl’s, and it was duly consecrated on July 24, 1994. Recently, I visited this new grave with one of the Czech Dawsonites who had helped to construct it. “We created the grave out of a combination of cement and Czech beer,” he informed me, adding, with a touch of Welzlian wit, “We considered sticking a radio tube into the grave because this would make it easier for Jan to communicate with us from the Great Beyond.”
On the grave, there was now a Czech flag as well as a photo of Welzl with a very broad grin on his face. It also had a box with notebooks filled with numerous comments by Czech visitors. In the most recent notebook, I wrote the only comment in English: “May the gods of whimsy still be with you, Jan!”
Deborah Kiley's gruesome, five-day ordeal in 1982 began as a routine sailing trip in the Atlantic. Soon, she would be forced to feed her friend to sharks and watch helplessly as two others leaped to their deaths.
Kiley was a confident sailor. By the age of 23, she already had years of experience crewing yachts. She earned her big break sailing in the 70,000km Whitbread Round the World Race (now The Ocean Race). In 1981, Kiley became the first American woman to complete the event. Her sailing future appeared prosperous.
The following year, she was hired to crew an 18m yacht called Trashman, during its transfer from Maine to new owners in Florida.
When the crew -- Kiley, Captain John Lippoth, his girlfriend Meg Mooney, and sailors Brad Cavanagh and Mark Adams -- set off from Maine for their six-day, 2,000km trip, conditions were perfect.
“The weather was beautiful, the boat was fun to steer,” recalled Kiley years later.
On their second day, they began to run into trouble.
A storm, and a drunken captain
A violent storm hit Trashman with 110kph winds and 10m waves. A heavily intoxicated Lippoth lay asleep at the wheel when the voices of her terrified crewmates woke Kelly up. Cold water gushed into the cabin. In a matter of moments, their situation turned desperate.
The yacht, now off the coast of North Carolina, was sinking quickly. The crew's only option was to throw themselves into the ocean.
Adams managed to inflate a small rubber dinghy. As the crew clambered into their life raft, Adam felt a nudge on his leg. They were completely surrounded by great white sharks.
“The minute we got in, there were fins everywhere in the water. I don’t mean like two or three, I mean 10, 20. They were everywhere,” said Kiley.
They realized that Mooney had gashed her leg severely during the capsize. The smell of blood drew sharks to the helpless crew. One shark clutched the dinghy’s bowline in its mouth, pulling the terrified crew along. When that didn’t tip them into the ocean, the sharks started nudging the boat.
Kiley resolved to stay focused. She covered her body in seaweed for warmth. To stay in control, she recited prayers.
Mooney was in agonizing pain. Her leg quickly became infected, and blood poisoning set in. By day three, everyone was severely dehydrated.
Out of desperation, a delirious Lippoth and Adams began drinking from the ocean. Toxic saltwater accelerates dehydration and shuts down the kidneys. In different circumstances, both men would have understood this.
Lippoth was the first to go. Convinced that he saw land, he suddenly threw himself overboard.
A blood-curdling scream and the captain was gone
“All of a sudden, we just heard this shrill scream. Blood-curdling,” said Kiley. “Then it was over, silence. There was no crying, nothing. There was no doubt what got him. The sharks got him.”
Shortly after, Adams suffered a similar fate. He babbled incoherently of heading to the shop to buy beer and cigarettes before hurling himself over the side of the dinghy.
“It was by far the most horrifying moment of my entire life,” Kiley said as she watched sharks eat him too. In their frenzied attack on Adam, the sharks butted the raft, tipping it precariously. Somehow, it managed to stay upright.
Hallucinations weren’t yet over for the surviving crew members.
Mooney succumbed next from the blood poisoning. She was dying before Kiley and Cavanagh’s eyes, but there was nothing they could do to help. When the pair woke in the morning, she was dead.
Starving and dehydrated, Cavanagh considered eating Mooney’s remains. Focused, Kiley talked him out of it.
A third perishes
Mooney’s infection had wept all over the dinghy's floor, which was now sodden with a mess of seaweed, blood, and pus. Feeling that they were risking infection themselves, the two survivors threw their friend overboard.
First, they undressed her, saving clothes and jewelry to give to her family, if they survived. Then they recited a prayer and pushed her over the edge of the boat.
'We tried to sleep so we wouldn't see Meg being eaten by sharks," said Kiley.
The pair had now been at sea for five days. Three of their friends had died. They tried to clean the boat from Mooney's infection. While doing so, Cavanagh slipped and fell into the shark-infested waters.
A desperate Kiley used all her strength to try to pull Cavanagh back into the boat, but she was just too weak. Then the pair spotted a cargo ship on the horizon, and a surge of adrenalin came over Cavanagh. Summoning the last of his strength, he managed to haul himself back on board.
Deliverance
When the pair were picked up 140km south of Cape Lookout, they'd drifted almost 150km off course.
Kiley and Cavanagh's five days in the Atlantic Ocean shifted the course of their lives irreversibly. It took years for Kiley to stop hearing her friends' screams as the sharks ate them. Returning to her previous life no longer made sense.
Kiley became a motivational speaker and penned two books about her ordeal. Albatross: The True Story of a Woman's Survival at Sea (1994) and No Victims Only Survivors: Ten Lessons for Survival (2006).
She married twice and had two children. In a cruel irony, her son drowned at the age of 23. When Kiley was 54, she herself died at home in Mexico. The cause of death was not made public.
Before she died, Kiley and Cavanagh featured in a 2005 Discovery Channel episode of I Shouldn't Be Alive. In the documentary, Cavanagh admitted, "It's not something you just turn off when it's over. You keep living in that survival mode. I don't know if you're shellshocked or what...but it's impossible to just go back to being the way you were before."
Although his outlook on life changed, Cavanagh returned to the water as a professional yachtsman.
For someone whose name is plastered all across North America, not much is known about Henry Hudson. Iconic yet elusive, his life and voyages are an unfinished puzzle. The English explorer vanished in 1610, after struggling for many years to find the Northwest Passage to Asia.
So far, his disappearance has featured minor clues, some rumors, and many theories only. Although we live in an age where information is right at our fingertips, neither historians nor Wikipedia editors have a satisfactory lowdown on Henry Hudson.
Before 1607, Henry Hudson’s life was a big question mark. Even afterward, historians have only speculated about what kind of man he was. So far, they have profiled him as an experienced, literate navigator, probably born in the 1570s. They claim to have found his father or grandfather, also named Henry Hudson, in Queen Mary’s Charter of 1555.
This earlier Hudson may have been a founding member of the Muscovy Company, which eventually funded Hudson’s journeys to the Arctic. If Hudson grew up wealthy, it is highly likely that he received a decent education, since he could read, write, and do mathematics. He possibly served as a cabin boy on voyages, explaining his later competence as an explorer.
Failure and persistence
We do know that in 1607, the Muscovy Company commissioned Hudson to lead an expedition to find a trade route from the Arctic to Asia. Alas, this first voyage was unsuccessful and undoubtedly set the stage for those in the years to come. The ship Hopewell sailed from England in April 1607 with a crew of 10 men, including Henry Hudson’s son John.
The expedition reached the Arctic Circle more than a month later. They managed to sail past Spitsbergen and Greenland. While Hudson recorded the abundance of whales in these waters, an industry the Muscovy Company was interested in developing, a route to the East evaded them.
Despite the summer season, heavy ice and high winds prevented them from venturing further. By the time they turned the ship around, tensions were high with the men. Hudson demoted two sailors and played favorites with others. This sowed seeds of anger and resentment that would play a major role in his later demise.
Various accounts and letters suggest that Hudson was headstrong and persistent. His insistence on finding a passage across the top of the world took him on another expedition to the Arctic Circle in 1608. This time, tried to access the Far East via Novaya Zemlya in northern Russia.
Hudson, his son John and a crew of 14 men left England on the Hopewell once again. Massive ice-packed areas again checked their progress. Hudson decided not to continue along the north coast of Russia and turned his ship back, toward the New World.
A near-mutiny
Eventually, the crew realized his intentions and almost mutinied, which prompted him to return to England. There, the Muscovy Company was disappointed in his failures and denied him any further funding. This made him desperate enough to turn to the rival Dutch East India Company. His obsession with exploring on his own terms would be his downfall.
In 1609, Hudson impressed the Dutch enough to win himself a generous payment of 800 guilders, a ship called the Half Moon, a crew of 20 English and Dutch sailors, and another opportunity to search for the Northwest Passage.
Unknown to the Dutch East India Company and the crew, Hudson’s attention began to turn to the exploration of the New World after fellow explorer and friend John Smith sent him maps and told him in a letter of a possible sea that led to northern Canada.
They sailed to Russia and encountered the same problems as before. Wanting to turn around, the crew almost mutinied again when Hudson announced a change of course to the New World via Spitsbergen. However, the crew reluctantly complied, after seeing John Smith’s maps.
They went to Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, as well as the northeastern coast in America. Hudson sailed past Plymouth, Boston, Virginia, and found a river (now the Hudson River). He is credited as the first European to discover New York and claimed Manhattan Island for the Dutch. When Hudson anchored in England en route to Holland, he was arrested and forbidden to sail to Amsterdam, as the English had become jealous of his accomplishments.
Where It All Went Wrong
The Virginia Company and British East India Company sent him on another voyage to find the Northwest Passage in 1610. He sailed on the Discovery to Iceland, then the Labrador region of Canada. He explored what is now called the Hudson Strait and Hudson Bay. They initially thought that they found the Northwest Passage -- Hudson Bay is a giant inland waterway, but it dead ends and is not a passage. Nevertheless, they spent several months mapping the area.
However, the Discovery became trapped in ice, which forced them to overwinter on the shores of James Bay. It was numbingly cold, supplies ran low, the men began to suffer from scurvy, and Hudson began to ration food, leaving more for his favorites, especially the ship’s carpenter.
Hudson promised to sail back home once the ice cleared but he deceived the crew. Doggedly, he intended to sail further west to explore more. The resentment and desperation culminated in a full-blown mutiny. The crew cast Hudson, his son, and seven other members off in a small shallop in Hudson Bay.
According to accounts from the mutineers, they left the marooned with food, warm clothes, and some weapons. They were never seen or heard from again. The mutineers sailed back to England and recounted their experience. Surprisingly, they were not charged or hanged for their crimes.
Plausible Theories
In the late 1950s, a stone was found on the side of a highway in the Upper Ottawa Valley of Ontario by a road crew, saying “HH 1612 CAPTIVE”. Despite the vast distance from Hudson Bay to the Ottawa Valley, this led some to suggest that the marooned members were captured by natives. However, Canadian museums ran tests and determined that the stone was not that old and that it is possibly a fake.
An explorer named Douglas Clavering led an expedition in 1823, where he supposedly found several graves on the island of Spitsbergen, one of which had the name Henry Hudson on it. When they exhumed the grave, the body was frozen and well-preserved. The crew brought the body on board the ship but eventually threw it overboard when the warmer climate kicked in and the body began to rot. This rumor was not confirmed in the ship’s log but rather mentioned in the writings of Archibald Smith, a mathematician and friend of Clavering.
Another theory is that Hudson and his men sought refuge on Danby Island and built a shelter in order to wait for an English ship to rescue them. Some fence posts were found with ax marks, which may make sense since the ship’s carpenter was among the marooned. However, no other evidence has turned up with regards to this finding.
A modern pursuit of Hudson
Travel writer and explorer Lawrence Millman, who has always had a fascination with the disappearances of explorers in the Arctic, spent some time attempting to trace Hudson’s last steps. He traveled to Cree villages and spoke with the residents.
Millman visited the Paint Hills area near James Bay. He spoke with Cree elders who grew up with stories of a “boatload of white men who fetched up on their shores”. The stories describe the men as having bloated faces and limbs. The leader was a white man with red hair and lots of jewelry. They referred to him as Firebeard and he supposedly married a Cree woman and had children. He was also told that Hudson could have married an Inuit princess.
Seeing as there have been no portraits of Hudson, this account seemed promising at first. But the story seemed to grow more and more muddled and comical as the interviews continued. Some of the Cree confused Hudson with the actor Rock Hudson and even the Oh! Henry chocolate bar.
He visited the elders in a community called Wemindji in eastern James Bay, where he got permission to excavate a spot called “Young Englishman’s Grave” which possibly housed John Hudson or even Henry Hudson himself. While Millman was optimistic that he would find some semblance of a resting place, this spot did not reveal anything but a large mound of lichen. A cycle of rumor and "he said, she said" continued, ultimately leading nowhere except to entertaining stories.
Bloodstains and question marks
What we do know is that there were bloodstains found on the ship’s deck when the mutineers returned to England. Hudson and his men most likely resisted and put up a fight before being cast off. After the mutineers marooned them, it is possible that currents took them to land. There, they would have interacted with the Cree and waited for an English ship to find them. But no such rescue mission ever came.
Today, the tales of Henry Hudson have faded into obscurity, despite the major contributions he made to exploration. He was responsible for opening up opportunities for fur trading and whaling in the region. His name echoes endlessly across North America, the most famous areas being the Hudson River, Hudson Bay, Hudson Strait as well as landmarks like the Henry Hudson Bridge. Let us not forget his legacy and continue to search for answers.
For more than 10 years, Miriam Lancewood and Peter Raine lived free from society as hunters and gatherers in New Zealand’s remote mountains. They survived happily without timepieces or timetables, but now the couple have to adapt to the changes wrought by time.
Their story is almost unbelievable. They grew up more than 18,000km apart, Raine in rural New Zealand, the son of a sheep farmer. Lancewood (her pen name) was born three decades later in the Netherlands, the middle of three siblings born within three years.
Lancewood's home was lovingly filled with music and theatre. In adolescence, her athletic career took off. For six years, she represented her country in pole vaulting and competed in the youth Olympics. She established a fitness acumen that helped her for years, and not just in sport. At the same time, she learned early the perils of a full schedule.
Revolt against scheduling
“My life in the Netherlands was based on time, running around the clock, jamming my studies and training and seeing friends, all in one day. It was stressful,” Lancewood told ExplorersWeb. “But because it is so normal in modern society, I never questioned it.”
Her parents introduced her to the joys of nature. Sometimes they camped wild near a river, sleeping under the stars. “That, I loved,” Lancewood recalls. "I always dreaded going back to my flat and crowded home country."
By contrast, Raine spent much of the 1970s living in the forest, protesting against commercial logging operations, which were a national concern in New Zealand back then. He bought land on the West Coast, preparing for a nuclear apocalypse which never came. He married and studied for a Ph.D. in environmental studies.
Shaped by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, Raine believed that people didn’t need government or authority for survival. When Raine encountered Raimon Panikkar’s Cosmotheandric Intuition (a theory that dissolves the idea of separate realities between man, God, and world), his view on reality transformed. He quit his job as a university professor in New Zealand and moved to India to live like a "modern nomad". That’s when Raine and Lancewood's worlds collided.
Lancewood had just completed her university degree and was in India after a year in Zimbabwe. With a chessboard under her arm, she was looking for company when she met Raine in a local chai shop.
Thirty-year age difference
The connection was instantaneous. The 30-year age difference was no barrier. His stories of adventure captivated Lancewood. What Raine had in intellectual curiosity, she complimented with physical prowess.
Despite inner words of caution, Lancewood moved in with Raine the following day. The pair then spent years traveling together through India, climbing mountains, and exploring South East Asia and Papua New Guinea. Eventually, they settled in Marlborough, at the top of New Zealand’s South Island.
They briefly settled into a house. Lancewood taught phys ed for at-risk youth while applying for New Zealand residency. But they soon knew that this wasn't a lifestyle they aspired to.
They decided to see how they would cope with living in the wild, away from society. They sold their belongings and headed into the mountains, armed with little more than a tent and bow and arrow.
“We spent a lot of time tramping in the wilderness, but then we decided we wanted to be a part of it, not just observers. We decided to spend four seasons [there] and see how we'd survive,” says Lancewood.
Seven years in the bush
The experiment lasted seven years.
“We saw no reason to come back to town or to settle. We felt completely at ease in the wild mountains of New Zealand. Sometimes we didn't see anyone for months,” Lancewood recalls. “I never missed anything.”
I can’t help but be enthralled by Lancewood and Raine. New Zealand has plenty of self-sufficient, off-grid stories, but Lancewood and Raine’s style is vastly wild and authentic.
Outwardly, they embody health. There’s no strain or sadness shown on their faces. No filth in their clothes, although Lancewood promises that all their belongings smell of campfires.
They lived in small, compact tents. Their few possessions fit into one backpack each and they spent their days hunting and gathering. In a bit of a gender turnaround, Lancewood took responsibility for hunting while Raine cooked and gathered wild food.
Hunting hare and possum with a bow
For the first two years, Lancewood hunted exclusively with a bow and arrow. She mostly stalked hare or possum (an unprotected animal in New Zealand), which were easy to carry back to camp. Later, she acquired a rifle.
When they first entered the bush, they left their pasts behind and had no plans for the future. They said goodbye to schedules and calendars. Not knowing what time, day, or month it was, they found it easier to focus on the present.
“Peter and I made a radical shift in our thinking and therefore in our life,” Lancewood said. "We went off the beaten track, to live an adventure. Not just going on a challenging holiday and returning home.
Every year, they approach their lifestyle differently to break up the monotony. One year, they walked the 3,000km Te Araroa Trail, which spans the length of New Zealand. Sometimes they spent one night in each place, sometimes four months. Occasionally helicopters dropped them food buckets in the rugged Southern Alps. It was a change from possum and a thrill to see visitors.
Lancewood isn’t like anyone I’ve encountered before. She’s a breath of fresh air. Her 38-year-old skin is flawless, without a wrinkle. Her effortless smile could appear in a toothpaste ad. Her shiny hair bounces enviably. She’s personable, grounded, and somehow relatable. When she speaks, her words make sense even to mortals like me, even though she barely spoke English when she and Raine first met.
Not for everyone
Raine worries about what will become of Lancewood when he is gone, although she certainly has a survivor mentality. In general, Raine is not as public or open as she is. Although she enjoys life without distractions, she also wants to share their lifestyle for others to learn from. Scores of people write her, saying that they want to do the same. But Lancewood knows that the challenges aren't for everyone.
“Last summer was pretty cold,” she admits. “Sometimes it's hard to keep warm in the snow in the mountains. Worst thing is endless rain. Our year on the West Coast was hard. Rain is no good when you live in a tent.”
To put her words into context, the West Coast is one of the wettest regions in the country. Annual rainfall regularly exceeds 10,000mm, and their lifestyle is at the mercy of the weather.
When it’s sunny, they walk, exploring lakes and waterfalls. When it's raining, they read in their tent. During their first winter, spent up at 1,200m, even the waterfalls sometimes froze.
Lancewood says that one of the major benefits of their lifestyle has been improved senses. But learning to do nothing has been one of her biggest challenges.
“It takes about two weeks for the mind to slow down in order to meet with the rhythm of nature. And in that time, you go through a period of boredom and restlessness,” she says.
Bestselling author
In 2017, after seven years, the couple left the New Zealand backcountry. Before they left, Lancewood penned her first book, Woman in the Wilderness. It became an international bestseller, translated into five languages.
The title made her a reluctant celebrity, especially in her native country. Since then, she’s been invited to book festivals around the world, including Dubai and Hong Kong. Although the festivals are exciting, she says that she can't ever see herself returning to life in a city.
They next flew to Europe and began a new adventure, walking 2,000 km across the continent, then on to Turkey.
Lancewood has always known that her days with Raine are a blessing. But in Turkey, the physicality of their life began to show on Raine’s then 64-year-old body.
They were having a bite to eat. Then Lancewood stood up and put her pack on, ready to continue walking. Raine didn’t do the same. The strain of shouldering his pack further was showing on his older body. When they went on to the Australian desert, things took a drastic turn.
“Peter got kidney failure in the desert in Australia," Lancewood said. "The doctors told him to live near a hospital in town and go on dialysis. He said, 'I rather die.' "
Dialysis? "I'd rather die," he said
Medics told Raine that he had a three percent chance of survival without a new kidney. When Lancewood offered hers, he declined. They told Lancewood to say her goodbyes.
“I have much respect for Peter's courage, he is not afraid to die,” Lancewood said.
Raine wanted his remaining time to be in the wild. A three-hour walk from cellphone coverage isn’t the smartest idea for someone with serious health concerns. So instead, they elected to recover in a hut back in New Zealand.
For the couple, the hut was restricting. Suffocating even. Diminishing their heightened senses and preventing the breeze from brushing over their cheeks.
Last November, Lancewood released her second book, Wild at Heart. It adds to her life story of living in remote areas of New Zealand and walking long routes, such as the 2,000km across Europe.
Eventually, when Raine’s health improved earlier this year, they returned to the backcountry. But they recognized that they had to adapt their lifestyle for the sake of Raine's health.
“It’s too cold at night, even with a possum duvet and yak blanket,” says Lancewood. Even in the height of summer, they were snowed in for five days.
Raine can't walk with a pack anymore, but they have found a new way of living.
Against medical advice, they flew to Bulgaria last year. For the summer, they lived in a shepherd’s cottage that they purchased in the Rhodope Mountains three years ago. They lived off-grid at 1,200m, a 2.5km walk from the nearest village. Their closest neighbor was a bear. A wild cat shared their hut, wolves scouted the mountains, and the couple ate from their vegetable garden.
From hunter-gatherers to nomads
Their new plan is to become nomads. Where? They don’t know yet. But Raine’s kidneys prefer warmth, especially in winter.
“One day we will end up in Tajikistan, or living in a hut in the Himalaya,” Lancewood said. “The main thing for us is to live free. To live without obligations, without many possessions. The more stuff I have, the more stuck I feel.”
Despite an innate fascination for survival in extreme conditions (Lancewood is currently reading One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn; Raine is rereading Nietzsche), their future will likely involve buying small cottages in different countries, and moving between each. Lancewood says that although it takes more planning to live that way, they are happy, and it’s another adventure.
“Living without security is healthy for the mind," she insists. "That is what keeps me sharp, alive, and happy. It is, by the way, also the secret for a long-lasting relationship.”
Nellie Bly was such a dedicated journalist that she had herself committed to a mental asylum for an undercover exposé. The story earned her a rare byline outside of the “women’s pages”, exposing conditions best kept secret from society. Journalism took her to exotic places, including an around-the-world race.
Born Elizabeth Cochran in 1864, Bly created her pen name when she began working for the Pittsburgh Dispatch in 1885.
She’d been offered the role after writing an angry rebuttal to the editor's uncomplimentary article entitled What Girls Are Good For. Bly’s letter was so good that she was offered a job.
At first, she covered local stories for the women’s column. Then she branched out into human interest stories, which were her primary focus.
Often, she tackled confrontational topics that were usually brushed beneath the surface. Bly was treading new ground, particularly as a woman in a profession typically left for men.
Expelled from Mexico
Eventually, she earned opportunities to tackle wider stories. First, she covered Mexico's corruption under dictator Porfirio Diaz.
On this seven-month assignment, she sent back regular reports to her editor. But Mexican officials did not receive her scathing reports well, and they expelled her from the country.
Within two years, Bly was ready to report on more explicit stories. She moved to New York, hoping to gain a notable position. Instead, she spent four months facing gender-based rejection. She finally won a position at Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World, one of the most popular publications of the time.
A 23-year-old Bly threw herself into her first assignment. Working to expose patient conditions at the Women's Lunatic Asylum, she went undercover, faking insanity. She was successfully committed.
For 10 days, she reported on the cruelty and neglect suffered by in-patients. It was worse than she expected. Sixteen hundred patients were crammed into a 1,000-capacity facility. Barely trained staff with little compassion ordered brutal treatment of those considered “mad”.
First investigative journalism
Patients had to take ice-cold baths and remain in wet clothes for hours. Others had to sit still and silent on benches for 12 hours at a time. Some patients were tethered together and forced to pull carts around like mules. Food and sanitary conditions were horrific.
Worst of all, many patients were not actually ill. Some had been victims of language barriers during immigration. Others were poor and had fallen through the cracks of society with nowhere to turn.
When she was committed as a patient, there was no promise she’d be allowed to leave. But her courage earned her a captivating story.
“Nearly all night long I listened to a woman cry about the cold and beg for God to let her die. Another one yelled, ‘Murder!’ at frequent intervals and ‘Police!’ at others until my flesh felt creepy,” she wrote about her first night in the asylum.
Bly’s editor secured her release and the report that followed shocked readers. It prompted a grand jury investigation, which led to long-overdue improvements to mental health patient care.
She later published her report into a book called Ten Days in a Mad-House. Already this secured her legacy because it was the beginning of what we now know as investigative journalism.
The exposé shot her to fame as the leading woman journalist of the time. She was taken into sweatshops, jails, and other institutes where people were desperate to tell their stories. But her best story was on the horizon.
Around the world in 72 days
A decade earlier, Jules Verne’s adventure novel Around the World in 80 Days hit bookshelves. It was born of the age of global tourism that was exploding after the Suez Canal opened, the linking of the Indian railways, and the first transcontinental road across America. Times had shifted from exploration to world travel.
Verne’s book sparked a sensation, inspiring pioneers to cross boundaries and attempt new adventures. Bly was no different.
With difficulty, she convinced her editor to let her turn Verne’s book into reality. "No one but a man can do this," he insisted.
"Very well," she replied, "Start the man, and I'll start the same day for some other newspaper and beat him." In 1889, she set off around the world to challenge the novel.
Unknown to her, a rival woman journalist was actually competing against her on the same mission. Elizabeth Bisland of Cosmopolitan magazine traveled in the reverse direction and was hot on her heels.
It took Bly 72 days, 6 hours, and 11 minutes to traverse the globe by train, ship, horse, rickshaw, and any other mode of transport native to the place she was in. Her project attracted worldwide attention, and she broke the record for the fastest time around the world. Bisland returned four days after Bly, awarding Bly the record and international stardom.
Bly's courageous, bull-headed approach to confronting the narrative that female journalists faced was singular for its time.
Becomes an industrialist
When she married millionaire Robert Seamen in 1895, at the age of 31, she retired from journalism. He was more than 40 years her senior and he died eight years after they wed. Bly was left with control of his substantial manufacturing firm, Iron Clad Manufacturing Co.
She took up Seamen’s business with the same vigor and pioneering spirit that she had applied to journalism. She patented several inventions at the iron mill, some of which remain in use today.
If anything, she surpassed her great name in journalism and adventure and became a leading women industrialist in the United States. But soon the financial aspects of running a large company suffocated her, and the company filed for bankruptcy.
The timing was not all bad for Bly, though. World War I provided plenty of opportunities to return to her roots and pen human interest stories. Journalism took her offshore again as the first woman to visit the war zone between Serbia and Austria.
When the Women’s Suffrage movement rose, Bly was once again in her reporting element. Her provocative article, Suffragists Are Men's Superiors, stopped readers in their tracks. Within the piece, she accurately predicted when women would win the right to vote in the United States.
In 1922, two years after that momentous event in women’s rights, Bly died of pneumonia.
Bly’s stories have inspired countless books and films, including The Adventures of Nellie Bly (1981), 10 Days in a Madhouse (2015), and the 1946 Broadway musical, Nellie Bly.
In 1998, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. In 2002, she was one of only four journalists to be honored with a U.S. postage stamp in a Women in Journalism set.
With a bonanza of polar bears readily available for touristic photo shoots, Churchill, Manitoba, has been called “The Polar Bear Capital of the World”. A Danish explorer named Jens Munk once ended up near this present-day tourist mecca not because he wanted to gawk at polar bears, but because he was looking for the Northwest Passage. His two ships, the frigate Unicorn and the sloop Lamprey, were forced into an estuary of the Churchill River due to the notoriously unpredictable weather in Hudson Bay.
Just after Monk’s arrival in September 1619, the northern winter began its siege. Monk’s crew started dying one by one, and by spring of the next year, only Munk himself seemed to be alive. He was expecting, perhaps even looking forward to his own death when two of his crewmen who’d earlier gone ashore returned to the boat and helped him off the Unicorn, then fed him some of the previous year’s berries and plant roots. His health returned, and the three men sailed back to Denmark.
Caused by a Vitamin C deficiency, scurvy was probably the expedition’s main culprit. For Munk’s men had no access to Vitamin C during their overwintering. In other words, they had no fresh meat (note: raw meat is better than cooked meat as an anti-scorbutic), no greens, and no fruit. They might have had medication for their bleeding gums, loose teeth, swollen eyes, and painful joints, but the ship’s doctor couldn’t read the Latin names in his medical kit.
The 63 bodies were either put into unmarked graves near the shore or simply rolled off the ships. A hundred years later, James Knight, who was setting up a Hudson Bay Company post at this site, found numerous “sculls and bones of men” at the Munk overwintering site. He also noted that “a great many of the graves be under some part of our building.”
Lest you think that Knight was inconsiderate of the Danish dead, the only place in the vicinity flat enough for a building was where the graves had been dug.
On a visit to Churchill, I decided to investigate the Munk overwintering site, so I went across the river with a local guide named Kelsey Eliasson. We put the boat ashore in a small cove and immediately noticed quite a bit of scurvy grass (Cochlearia offinalis), a plant that’s very high in Vitamin C — higher, in fact, than oranges or lemons. Since Roman times, it had been eaten or used a tea to fight off scurvy. Apparently, Munk and his men were unaware of this fact.
Now we walked uphill a hundred or so feet because, rather than being on the shore, the site of Munk’s overwintering would now be inland due to glacial rebound — i.e., the perpetual rise of land in the Hudson Bay area. We searched for a piece of cutlery, a candlestick, a clay pipe, or perhaps a stray Danish bone. Meanwhile, Kelsey kept his rifle at the ready in case a polar bear showed up and decided that, in the absence of a seal, one of us might be a decent edible.
Soon we found ourselves mired in a dense forest…a dense forest of willows two to three feet high. Since we had climbed up a modest slope, we were probably above the burial site, so we began climbing down the slope at a different spot than where we’d climbed up.
And then we found…berries. Crowberries, bilberries, gooseberries, and salmonberries. Berries galore.
Right away Munk’s overwintering became history in our thoughts, and we transformed ourselves into hunter-gatherers. Or I should say our hunter-gorgers, since we were now popping huge amounts of berries into our mouths.
I especially looked for cloudberries (Rubus chamaemorus), whose name (note: the other names are bakeapple and salmonberry) suggests that it possesses a bland, wispy flavor. Quite the contrary. With leaves very similar to the leaves of a maple, these bunched amber-colored berries in the Rose family carry a hint of sumptuous decay that suggests a fermented, red-blooded cherry.
Kelsey introduced me to eating the bright pink flowers of fireweed (Chamaenerion angustifolium), the first plant that usually colonizes eroded or waste areas in these parts. Chewing them will ease the discomfort of a sore throat, he told me. Since I didn’t have a sore throat, I returned to my cloudberry gorging.
In the end, we didn’t find a single Munk artifact or even a sliver of a 17th-century Danish bone. No matter. It’s the journey rather than the destination that matters…especially if that journey includes cloudberries.
Often people who appear outwardly bizarre are anything but. In the case of Dr. Geebers, who left a trail of stone sculptures while walking more than 10,000km around Britain, he was simply misunderstood. Geebers was an artist exploring his craft. At the same time, he was trying to figure out how to fit into the mold of common society.
We first came across Geebers (real name George Barnett) while sharing a news story about a walk around Britain. While investigating how many people have walked around Britain’s coastline (as few as 53 people), an unusual name popped up on the shortlist. Geebers, it turned out, had a rather unique story.
Geebers first hit headlines in 2011. It had taken him two years to walk Britain's perimeter. He slept rough and walked alone. Along the way, he left a trail of 44 pebble sculptures on beaches.
Originally from Northern Ireland, the then-37-year-old man saw himself as an artist trying to make a living. Society, on the other hand, saw him through a different lens.
He’d been homeless for seven years.
“Many homeless people in life hit rock bottom, and the only way is up,” he wrote in an online journal that offered some insight into his thoughts. "When I came up with the idea of creating pebble sculptures, I knew I had a chance to change my life around for the better."
How it all began
He began his immense walk serendipitously after police ordered him to move on from his usual rough sleeping spot. He documented parts of his journey in an online blog.
“Yes, I am Dr. Geebers. A crazy man who fell on hard times. Yet I pulled myself out of the gutters of life by creating loose pebble sculptures on UK beaches and poetry rhymes. From being no one with nothing to walking the coast of the UK 6,800 miles, creating on 40+ beaches, and moving over 2,000 tonnes of pebbles/stones. While living outside with no sponsorship or funding,” his blog's home page declared.
In Bexhill, East Sussex, he left a pebble field of balancing stones. Some of the intricately balanced towers reached half a metre tall with one rock sitting atop the other. His sculptures sometimes seemed to defy gravity.
In one busy café, he left pebble towers between tables as patrons sipped coffee.
He left “crazy stones in crazy little places” at Egerton Park. Publicly uploading clips of his work to his blog, he probably hoped that one day his sculptures would be appreciated.
They say that one of the toughest aspects of being homeless is being invisible to passersby. Although people admired Geebers' work, an exchange of words was uncommon. Though when words did pass the lips of strangers, they often left a lasting impact on Geebers.
One such supporter's words were the inspiration for his next project.
Brighton Beach work
After completing his walk around Britain, Geebers turned his attention to Brighton Beach. “My inspiration was the Mods and Rockers. It is coming up to the 40th anniversary of that movement in Brighton and I wanted to do something musical,” he said at the time.
Some of his most iconic sculptures included a guitar, a piano, and gulls. All created in a place that he said once brought him luck.
But his luck didn’t change. Despite a growing reputation as The Pebble Man, who created joy and entertainment for passersby, Geebers leaped off Brighton Pier, ending his life in 2015. He is survived by a daughter.
Most likely his sculptures have suffered similar fates, tumbling to a rocky floor or succumbing to the tides. But copycats continue his legacy along coastlines worldwide.
His alias may be coincidental, but the Urban Dictionary describes Geebers as "somebody who is unknown to others, but feels obligated to act a fool."
Albert Einstein said that the important thing is not to stop questioning. But where do the questions end? Will they ever end?
The strange disappearance of the Roanoke Colony in the late 16th century, one of America’s greatest mysteries, has confronted prickly questions for centuries. Inevitably, fact and fiction become blurred, and the Lost Colony has slowly receded into legend. But in the last few years, renewed interest in what happened to these unfortunate souls has brought us close(ish) to solving the mystery.
Roanoke Island was first spotted in 1584 by Captains Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlow. They sought an ideal location for a settlement and this seemed to fit the bill. The two explorers returned to England with optimistic reports. They also brought with them England’s first Native American visitors, a Croatoan chief named Manteo and Wanchese, the last-known leader of the Roanoke tribe.
Both shared their language with the captains and enlightened them about the land and its resources, and even possible alliances with neighboring tribes. Their presence in England helped popularize these expensive New World journeys. The explorers returned to Roanoke Island in 1585 with another expedition. That was the year that trouble began.
Settlers twice tried to establish a Roanoke colony. The first attempt was more of a military and scientific reconnaissance. Then an expedition commanded by Sir Richard Grenville set out with five ships and 600 settlers, including John White.
Enter John White
White was the voyage’s artist and mapmaker, as well as Roanoke’s future governor. After several misfortunes, the expedition finally arrived in the New World, low on food. Grenville decided to return to England for supplies, leaving Ralph Lane, a temperamental man, in charge as governor. During this time, Lane launched two expeditions up the Chowan and Roanoke Rivers, the areas around the Chesapeake Bay and the Albemarle. He and his men established contact with native peoples along the way.
As they waited for Grenville’s return, the colonists relied on the Secotan tribe for food. It wasn't long before morale declined and tensions flared. The colonists went treasure hunting for copper, gold, and silver, which they suspected the natives had in abundance.
The colonists’ frustration and resentment toward the natives, as well as the lack of food, led to a conflict that took the life of the Secotan leader, Wingina. The hostile repercussions and unsustainable conditions prompted Lane and his men to abandon Roanoke. They returned to England in 1586. But Sir Walter Raleigh still insisted on establishing a colony.
In the autumn of 1587, approximately 118 men, women, and children arrived at Roanoke Island with Governor John White. They too arrived low on supplies. The colonists pleaded for White to return to England for more. White left his daughter, Eleanor White Dare, her husband Ananias Dare, and their daughter Virginia (the first English baby born in America) back in Roanoke before sailing back to England. The colonists told him that they intended to move 90km inland, away from the lingering resentments and hostilities from the Secotans.
War had broken out with Spain, and White couldn't return to the New World for three years. When he finally did in 1590, he found the settlement abandoned with no clues, except the enigmatic messages, “CRO” and “CROATOAN” carved into a tree and palisade, respectively. And thus, the big debate began.
The rumor mill
In 1625, English historian Samuel Purches wrote that the prominent chief Powhatan boasted to explorer John Smith about the colonists’ deaths. However, this exchange is not mentioned in any other explorer’s writings, including Smith’s.
The colonial secretary William Strachey claimed that several settlers were killed, and the survivors sought refuge with a welcoming tribe. But no evidence suggests that a massacre took place. Around 1608, natives reported that a small group of the Roanoke colonists were alive and held hostage in Iroquois territory in eastern North Carolina. No one pursued or confirmed these claims further.
Plausible theories
The leading theory is that the colonists went to Croatoan Island (now known as Hatteras Island). In his writings, White interpreted the carved messages as the colonists’ new location. His attempts to get to Croatoan Island were unsuccessful because of a storm. They had to sail out to sea. After the storm had passed, the ship’s crew did not want to go back. A heartsick White ended up sailing back to England. He never returned to Roanoke and believed that his family was dead.
The main scholar who supports this theory is Scott Dawson, co-founder of the Croatoan Archaeological Society. He and his excavation team found a slate writing tablet, 16th-century gun hardware, parts of swords, a rapier hilt, pottery shards, and even a floral clothing clasp belonging to a woman. He believes that the colonists lived with the relatively friendly Croatoans, eventually intermixing.
Other exploration mysteries: What really happened to the skiers at Dyatlov Pass? New evidence may have finally solved it. And how did a Chinese archaeologist vanish without a trace in an area he knew so well?
Accounts from years afterward describe some indigenous people with blue or grey eyes and sometimes blonde hair. Dawson also points out that the Croatoans were at war with the Secotans at the time. The Croatoans helped the English a few years earlier in their own skirmishes with the Secotans.
The second most popular theory is that the colonists relocated to the Salmon Creek/Albemarle area. In 2011, the First Colony Foundation, together with the British Museum, made a discovery on John White’s 1585 La Virginea Pars map. The map includes a hidden fort symbol near the confluence of Salmon Creek and Albemarle Sound in North Carolina. In 2012, the foundation investigated the location of the fort. Researchers found English pottery and weapons, but no trading goods like copper or beads. This was called Site X.
Site Y, less than two kilometers north, was discovered in 2015 by archeologist Nick Luccketti near a former Weapemeoc Village called Mettaquem. They found English pottery shards and even some Spanish olive jars. To them, this suggested food storage by an extended family or small family units. The lack of English pipes indicated that the artifacts might not belong to the residents of Jamestown, the first successful colony after Roanoke.
Did they assimilate? Die from strife or disease?
Historian Thomas Parramore of Meredith College supports the idea that several colonists went to live with the Weapemeoc. They and the English were friendly, and their land had good soil for crops. However, he believed that the colonists perished in conflicts among the Weapemeoc, Secotans, and Chowanokes.
What about disease? Most encounters between Old and New World peoples usually ended catastrophically for the natives. They often succumbed to European diseases like smallpox and influenza. But some historians do not rule out the possibility that the colonists also perished from a New World disease.
However, there are several holes in this theory. No remains, no graves, no traces of personal belongings, and no evidence of a major contagion among the region's tribes have ever turned up. The likelihood of a New World sickness was low, as the Americas did not have as many dangerous germs as Europe. The disappearance of all their belongings strongly suggests that movement took place.
The natural disaster theory is less well known but bears some merit. The colonists reportedly arrived during the worst drought in eight centuries. It lasted from 1587 to 1589.
Scientists examined a series of trees near the Virginia-North Carolina border. The tree rings revealed that a severe drought did occur at the time of the colony’s establishment. Another drought took place around the time of Jamestown’s founding.
Nothing could have prepared the colonists for such conditions. It seems likely that they were desperate to leave and find a better situation. But researcher Dennis Blanton has argued that while a drought contributed to the colonists’ end, it was not the sole cause of their disappearance.
The Dare stones: Hoax or Clue?
Probably the most controversial evidence has been the Dare Stones. During the Great Depression, a tourist named Louis E. Hammond delivered a 9.5kg stone to Emory University that he supposedly found in the Chowan River. It bore a chiseled message on it, describing “misarie and warre”.
The stone mentions illness and murder by the natives. It is signed EWD, as in Eleanor White Dare. However, the use of initials is too modern a practice, according to linguists. Scientists almost discredited the find but they have held off because of the stone's significant weathering.
Some scholars believe that this stone and the 47 more that turned up shortly after are genuine. A man named Bill Eberhardt brought these other stones forward, creating a frenzy. Had the mystery been solved at least?
The 47 stones turned out to be forgeries. The first stone itself remains in academic limbo, neither accepted nor rejected. It is in the care of Brenau University.
Supernatural theories
You can’t have a mystery without something spooky. The disappearance of the colonists has been linked to evil spirits, witches, and monsters. The Croatoans believed that a reptilian devil lurked in the woods of North Carolina, looking to possess people. It made people jealous, paranoid, and violent. The indigenous people also believed in witches and black magic.
Sally Southall Cotten wrote a poem in 1901 that spoke of what supposedly befell Virginia Dare. Cotten surmised that a tribe adopted the girl and she was later engaged to a desirable chieftain. Unfortunately, a jealous witch turned her into a white doe to stop their marriage. Poor Virginia has roamed the woods ever since.
And, of course, aliens must make an appearance. Some believe that the colonists were abducted and taken to another dimension. Or is it another planet?
While it is certain that the colonists packed up and left Roanoke Island, no evidence suggests what happened after their mini-migration to the interior. It remains unclear whether they stuck together, if families went their separate ways, if they chose to live with the indigenous people, or if they were just massacred. The biggest questions of all remain.
Thomas Manning was a remarkable scholar and master linguist, but his eccentricities and single-minded drive to reach Peking gave him a reputation as a bumbler.
Although Manning didn't graduate from Cambridge (the idea of passing tests was preposterous to him), he had excelled. He was probably England’s first Sino-maniac. He had tired of studying Latin, Greek, mathematics, and philosophy. Instead, he set his mind to the ultimate linguistic challenge: Chinese literature.
Starting at the Centre of Oriental Studies in Paris, Manning soon became obsessed with reaching the language's source. He planned to travel to Peking (now Beijing). There was just one problem: Foreigners were forbidden from entering China. They weren’t even allowed to study the language.
So Manning concocted a scheme. First, he enlisted a Chinese tutor from Macau, hoping to avoid unwanted attention. The pair set off from Canton (modern-day Guangzhou), on an East India Company Ship.
Tried to pass himself off as Vietnamese
For every ounce of academic intelligence, Manning seemed to lack common sense. His first hare-brained scheme to enter mainland China involved passing as Vietnamese. He disembarked off the coast of Northern Vietnam in a long traditional gown. Unfortunately, it didn't matter how authentic the gown was. Tall and pale, Manning had no hope of fooling anyone. They were forced to find another route.
Manning looked to Tibet for an alternative. However, he did very little research into the 5,000km journey. Since the 1788 war between Tibet and Nepal, Tibet was only open to Tibetan nationals, Chinese diplomats, and Chinese troops. Eccentric Englishmen had not made the shortlist. Chinese troops were stationed in Lhasa and other large Tibetan towns.
Many explorers longed to visit Tibet. Some had come close, but no one had made it as far as Lhasa. Manning was not fond of traveling, was ill-prepared for the journey, and had no financial backing. Yet he was attempting a world first.
His knowledge was so limited that he brought a pair of ice skates to take advantage of the Himalayan winter. Adding to the farce, Manning and his tutor continuously argued.
In 1811, the pair departed from Calcutta, India, by horseback. Though Manning was a hopeless rider, they persevered through the Himalaya to Tassisudon (now Thimphu, the capital of Bhutan).
Altitude wreaked havoc on Manning’s temperament. Uncharacteristically calm, he noted blandly in his journal that he felt a “strange sensation coming along: warm and comfortable.”
Fixated on filth
The small village of Phari was Manning's first introduction to Tibetan customs. It should have been an honor, but he found it displeasing. Instead of remarking on the surroundings, language, or customs, he fixated on the filth.
The village was strewn with waste. Rubbish was piled so high that people had dug holes to reach their doors. The eye-watering stench attracted vultures. In the distance were views of Tibet’s snow-capped mountains. But Manning didn't even notice.
When they had arrived, a Tibetan official greeted them. Bizarrely, Manning assumed the character of a pilgrim from Bengal. Aside from the obvious appearance discrepancies, the tall, pale-skinned, bearded man with an English accent was accompanied by a Chinese tutor.
Thoroughly perplexed, the official didn't know what to make of the duo. He left the matter for a high-ranking military officer who was due in town shortly. However, the officer needed a place to stay, so Manning and his tutor were downgraded to a place of “dirt, dirt, grease, smoke, misery, but good mutton,” as he recounted in his journal.
Thankfully, two of Manning's skills played to his advantage. He was by now fluent in Chinese and knowledgeable about medicine, which the Chinese troops desperately needed.
Dr. Manning, I presume?
Manning had studied medicine hoping it would pay off in the Orient. Now he was positioned to set up an impromptu clinic for Chinese troops. Manning’s luck was on the rise.
The Chinese officer invited him to proceed with them as far as Gyantse. Naturally, Manning decided to assume another comical disguise. This time he cloaked himself as a Chinese physician, with spectacles and a long gown.
The trek was no holiday. Manning suffered from bedbugs and repeatedly fell from his horse. Undeterred, they arrived in Gyantse. Manning was the first Englishman to make it that far into Tibet in 28 years.
George Bogle and Samuel Turner had been the last Englishmen in Tibet. Both men were sent to improve trade relations but had come up short. Manning should have been an ideal candidate to continue their task, but he was overlooked for the role. His wacky character was considered unsuitable for negotiating deals. Regardless, it was hoped that he would return to Britain with valuable data. Instead, he traveled on his own agenda.
Impressed with Manning’s medicinal skills, the officer eventually granted Manning permission to enter Lhasa, accompanied by Tibetan monks. Manning even managed to acquire a cook in the arrangement.
Finally enters Lhasa
Manning became the first Englishman to enter the city, a momentous occasion. Unfortunately, he could barely string together a sentence to describe his experience. “Our first care was to provide ourselves with proper hats,” were his first written words. Unaware that Tibetan headdress denotes rank, he trundled off to a hat maker.
Other descriptions from the explorer included calling prayer wheels “whirligigs”. And when he encountered the Tsangpo (a river that had preoccupied geographers for a century), he was more focused on seating arrangements than geography: “I could not sit still, but must climb about, seat myself in various postures on the parapet, and lean over,” he penned in his journal.
The Holy City was just another unimpressive sight for Manning. The city had no plumbing, garbage was piled up, and mangy dogs roamed the streets. The garbage was only collected annually. “If the palace exceeded my expectations, the town far fell short of them. There is nothing striking, nothing pleasing in its appearance,” he wrote.
Manning bumbled his way through an official greeting with the Chinese Emperor's representative in Lhasa. To look the part, he donned as much local clothing as he could garner, hoping it would help him enter China.
The Dalai Lama
He even met the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama asked Manning if he’d met with any “molestations and difficulties on the road.” Manning answered without hesitation, “Many.”
Despite Manning's attitude, the locals were besotted with him. He became the talk of the town and many Tibetans traveled long distances to see this peculiar and exotic personage in the flesh.
With the meager earnings from his medical practice, Manning stayed in Lhasa for several months. But when he began to suffer from rheumatism, he rushed to leave. He sold off his gear cheaply, which aroused the suspicion of local officials. They suspected that he was a spy, or worse, a missionary.
Frightened that he'd be discovered as someone wanting to learn the Chinese language, Manning saddled up and bolted back to Calcutta and then on to Canton by boat. His tutor remained in Lhasa.
Lhasa had finally been visited by an Englishman but Manning had never wanted to be there. He simply wanted to visit Peking. In 1817, he had his opportunity.
By joining a British Embassy delegation as an interpreter, he could enter Peking. To appear more diplomatic, he ditched his gown but elected to keep his beard. It had taken six years but Manning had reached his holy grail.
Perhaps predictably, his visit was fleeting. Almost immediately, an argument about protocol broke out. Soon after, his team was put on a ship to England without the chance to explore.
Bitter about the experience and tight-lipped on detail, Manning settled back in England. He had no furniture but possessed the best Chinese library in Britain. Until 1903, Manning remained the only Englishman ever to enter Tibet.
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In 2016, a 72-year-old woman and her dog were rescued after spending nine days lost in the Arizona desert. Her smart thinking led to the pair's unlikely survival.
Technically their chances of getting out alive were “statistically abnormal”, said one professional survival instructor. Gila County's wilderness covers an extensive 1,214,000,000 hectares and is the largest of the six national forests in Arizona. One thing the area doesn’t have is outstanding mobile phone coverage.
Rodgers was on her way to visit her grandchildren in Phoenix with her pet dog when her hybrid car ran out of power and gas reserves. She’d noticed a gas station sign earlier but when she turned off the main road to locate it, quickly became lost. Now out of mobile phone coverage, she and her small house dog left the vehicle and climbed several ridgelines, hunting for a cell signal to call for help.
Abandons her car and begins walking
"I waited until sun up the next morning hoping a truck or car, anybody, anything would go by, even a steer! I didn't care, anything alive," Rodgers recalled. But nothing and no one came. After two days, she abandoned her vehicle and headed for a stream she had seen from one of the ridges.
For the next nine days, Rodgers and her dog survived by eating desert plants and drinking pond water while waiting for rescue. Rodgers had read a book on the edible plants of the Southwest, which informed her choices of food.
Under normal circumstances, leaving a vehicle behind when lost is a certain way to evade rescue attempts. But this resourceful Gran came up with ways to be detected by authorities.
After they had spent three days without food, Rodger’s made a sign across the canyon floor from rocks and bones from a bleached elk skeleton, spelling out the word, “HELP”. Under one of the rocks, she put a small note outlining her predicament. At night, when the temperatures dipped below freezing, Rodgers built a fire. Her lifelong smoking habit helped her on this occasion. Then she made shelter for the pair.
"I was eating desert plants. My dog was too, diving into clover and finding all the places that were the easiest path for me to take. She was my pathfinder on that journey," Rodgers said.
When Rodgers had been missing for three days, a multi-agency search began after someone finally noticed her car on a remote stretch of road. Even with two separate helicopter searches and multiple ground searches, they found no trace of her during those first few days. A breakthrough only occurred after nine days, when a Game and Fish officer found her dog wandering in the canyon. Rescuers then spiked their aerial search efforts.
Help sign spotted
Next, they spotted the “Help” sign and handwritten note.
“The note said she had been without food for three days and that she was going to continue looking for a ranch and going downstream,” one of the rescuers said.
Shortly afterward, from the helicopter, they noticed an abandoned shelter Rodgers had made. After rounding a bend in the canyon, they saw Rodgers herself waving next to a signal fire.
"When that helicopter, that air rescue police copter landed, I just sat down and bawled," Rodgers said. "Remarkable, remarkable, remarkable."
She had escaped unscathed and was able to board the helicopter. Rescuers agree that after leaving the vehicle behind, she was smart to create a trackable trail for rescuers to follow.
“If it was a different season, she would not have lived,” said a survival expert. “Arizona can be a brutal state to stay alive in because we have mountains and deserts and everything in between.”
Flown to hospital for treatment, Rodgers was released later that same day.
Some of the most popular UK trails for walkers, hikers, and mountaineers are known as “black spots”, the places where the most accidents occur. Below, the most treacherous of them. They are the most dangerous places in the UK.
Snowdonia: 200 rescues a year
Wales’s Snowdonia National Park is perilous in spots and also incredibly busy. The Llanberis Mountain Rescue Team works around the clock answering over 200 calls annually, from mild injuries to fatal falls. The park averages eight deaths per year, mainly due to two specific black spots: Crib Goch and the Pyg and Miner’s Track scrambles.
For those who don't know the term, a scramble is a little more than a hike and a little less than a climb. You don't need ropes, but you have to use your hands at times. Scrambles offer varying degrees of exposure. Sometimes, a slip at the wrong place is fatal.
Crib Goch is Welsh for red ridge. It is an arete on pyramid-like Garnedd Goch, part of the Snowdon Massif. This scramble has a famously narrow section that is not technical but where the consequences of a slip are dire. This ridge becomes even more treacherous in bad weather or high winds.
The Pyg and Miner’s Track on Snowdon Mountain becomes icy in winter and it is very easy to misstep, especially on the jagged rocks. Ice axes are recommended on this stretch in winter. The route is also avalanche-prone.
The Cairngorms
In Scotland, the Aonach Eagach and the Cairngorm Plateau are two notorious black spots that receive more than 130 rescue calls annually. The Anoach Eagach also includes a treacherous scramble with a narrow, exposed ridge which becomes very slippery when wet.
A narrower section of rocky spikes called the Pinnacles is a black spot within this black spot. People who try to ease their way around the sides are usually the ones who call for help. People who opt to descend down Clachaig Gully may suffer a world of hurt in the loose scree. Descending via the Pap of Glencoe is safer.
The Cairngorm Plateau is probably the blackest of black spots in all the UK. Frequent avalanches are the least of its perils. Crosswinds up to 278kmph can blow people over the hard-to-spot edges. It is easy to get lost.
From the 1950s to 1960s, the plateau served as a training ground for rescue teams and even the Royal Air Force, but this stopped because of danger to the trainees! Snow blankets this exposed plateau throughout the winter, disorienting hikers and making the edges of the cliffs difficult to determine.
Mountain rescue teams get over 50 calls annually. It's safest in summer, but even then, the weather can change so quickly and intensely that winter set in temporarily at any time.
The Lake District
Because of the sheer number of visitors, England’s Lake District tops the list as the most dangerous place in the UK. Rescue teams respond to over 600 calls a year. The well-named Sharp Edge is a ridge on Blencathra, one of the Lake District’s most northern hills. It is another scramble with an exposed crux raked by crosswinds. It becomes as slippery as glass when wet. While the ridge is short, it remains challenging for inexperienced visitors even on a clear summer day. Its reputation lures daredevils from all over the country.
Lastly, Scafell Pike, England’s highest mountain, endures the worst visibility of any place in Britain. Cloud cover frequently disorients hikers, some of whom venture into Piers Gill, thinking that it is a viable descent route. It is actually an area -- difficult for rescuers to access -- that includes a plunging drop into a small canyon with a small stream. When wet, the rocks become polished and slippery, causing a lot of broken bones over the years.
Louis Zamperini first gained fame as one of the greatest middle distance runners of all time. He represented the United States in the 5,000m at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Then World War II broke out, and his life took a drastic turn. He spent 47 days drifting on a life raft in the Pacific. He battled years of starvation, disease, and torture from sadistic Japanese prison guards. Eventually, after the President had officially declared him dead, he returned home.
Zamperini was born to immigrant Italian parents shortly after World War I. A delinquent child, he fought, committed petty crimes, was smoking by the age of five, and drinking by age eight. Once after a teacher disciplined him, he deflated her car tires. On another occasion, he threw tomatoes at a cop.
Then one day, a couple of charming ladies encouraged him to try athletics. He quickly discovered that he had a natural ability as a runner. He soon channeled his energy into sport and turned from local terror to local hero.
Delinquent to runner
While running for the University of Southern California, he set a national record over the mile -- four minutes 21 seconds. After graduation, he switched to the 5,000m distance. He was the youngest athlete ever to make the team at the Berlin Olympics.
Although he didn’t have a podium finish in Germany, he returned to a promising running career. He planned on chasing the elusive sub-four minute-mile at the 1940 Olympics, 14 years before Roger Bannister actually achieved it.
But Zamperini never had the chance to try. World War II broke out in 1939, and the Olympics were canceled. Instead, he joined the U.S. Army as a lieutenant in 1941. He never ran competitively again.
Zamperini approached his military training with the same energy and discipline as he had in athletics. He was one of just 15 attendees out of thousands invited to a survival lecture. Although he didn’t know it at the time, the techniques he learned that day later saved his life.
He served as a bombardier on a B-24 airplane and flew several missions. On one, Japanese fighters attacked his plane and riddled it with more than 600 bullets.
The B-24s were ahead of their time but they weren’t without issues. In another sortie off Hawaii in 1943, Zamperini and his crew ran into serious trouble.
The plane crash
They were searching for lost crew members and aircraft when their plane suffered mechanical issues. Both engines lost power, and they plummeted into the ocean south of Oahu.
The impact killed 11 of the crew, leaving just Zamperini, pilot Russell Allen Phillips, and tail gunner Francis McNamara as the sole survivors. But their ordeal was just beginning. For Zamperini, it lasted almost two more years.
Amid the burning fuselage, the three men managed to clamber aboard two life rafts. With no means of communicating, they floated aimlessly in the Pacific Ocean, hoping for rescue and to evade capture.
They drank rainwater and ate fish and birds. Once they managed to capture two albatrosses that landed on their raft. They ate one and used the other as bait to catch fish.
They endured constant famine, blistering heat, and were in dread of capture by the enemy.
Enemy bombers attacked them from above and punctured one of their rafts. Everyone managed to transfer onto the second. When sharks brushed up against it, they fended them off with a paddle.
The outcome appeared bleak, but Zamperini had an inner strength. “When I was on that life raft, I was the only one who was prepared," he said later, referring to the attention he'd paid to survival training.
After 33 days, McNamara died. The two survivors had little choice but to throw him overboard.
Prisoner of war
Eventually, after 47 days at sea, Zamperini and Phillips managed to steer their raft into the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. They finally set foot on land but were far from safe.
The Japanese captured them almost immediately and separated the pair. Zamperini spent his first six weeks on Kwajalein. Then his captors transferred him to mainland Japan. He was confined in three different POW camps and interrogation centres.
Zamperini’s athletic abilities made him an easy target for a sadistic Japanese corporal named Mutsuhiro Watanabe, who took particular joy in torturing him.
Initially, starvation, disease, exposure, and near-daily beatings from guards were the primary issue. But Watanabe quickly upped the ante, which caused nightmares to Zamperini for years to come.
Watanabe beat him with clubs, bats, and fists, threatening to kill him. He forced Zamperini to punch other prisoners until they were nearly unconscious. He once even forced Zamperini to hold a heavy wooden beam above his head, threatening to shoot him if he dropped it.
Guards forced the starvation-weakened Zamperini to run foot races against Japanese soldiers. If he dared to win, they beat him.
By this point, he’d been given up for dead back home. The United States War Department assigned Zamperini an “official death date,” and President Roosevelt signed a condolence letter to his family.
Then Japanese officials tried to have him read propaganda messages over Radio Tokyo, denigrating the U.S. government.
In September 1945, more than two years after Zamperini's plane crashed, Japan surrendered and he was liberated.
"None of us believed [he was alive]. None of us. Never once. Not underneath, even,” Zamperini’s sister Sylvia said.
The long aftermath
Zamperini arrived home famous. He had been an Olympic hero thought to have perished at sea. “After being declared dead and finding that we’d crashed and survived the 47-day drift and nearly 2,000 miles, you get quite a bit of publicity,” he later said.
But the damage he received during his time as a prisoner was irreversible, and the years of malnutrition and torture rendered him unable ever to run competitively again. He was plagued by nightmares. Like many returned servicemen, he used alcohol to stave off the memories. He eventually found solace in Christianity and was able to forgive the men who tortured him.
Zamperini returned to Japan five years after his release, facing his former guards. He shook hands with most, some he embraced. Watanabe was absent, so Zamperini penned a letter to him, forgiving him instead.
Watanabe was later listed as number 23 on a list of Japan’s most wanted war criminals, but he was never executed.
Zamperini’s story has been chronicled in Laura Hillenbrand’s book, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. It has been a bestseller since its publication in 2010. In 2014, Angelina Jolie directed a film version, called Unbroken.
Although he died shortly before Jolie’s film hit theaters, Zamperini viewed it from his hospital bed before passing away in 2013 at the age of 97.
Here at ExWeb, when we’re not outdoors, we get our adventure fix by exploring social media and the wider interweb. Sometimes we’re a little too plugged in, and browsing interesting stories turn from minutes into hours. To nourish your own adventure fix, here are some of the best links we’ve discovered this week
The Woman Who Trekked Through Pandemic-Hit Europe: Ursula Martin defines herself as an extreme rambler. Between 2014 and 2015, she walked 6000km in and around her homeland of Wales, while undergoing treatment for ovarian cancer. More recently, in the last two years, she walked alone from Ukraine to the most westerly point of Spain.
An Agonizingly Thirsty Crawl Through the Desert: Just how long can someone last in the desert without a drink of water? In 1905, a gold prospector named Pablo Valencia reportedly wandered through 43˚C heat in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert for six days before stumbling into a geology camp. He was about as close to dead as you can get while still breathing.
These Polish Dudes Slipped the Iron Curtain and Changed River-Running Forever: One of the most inspiring chapters in whitewater history was written by an unlikely group of young Polish men who slipped under the Iron Curtain in 1979. Without money, proper gear, or much of a clue, they pioneered many of the classic river runs from Mexico to Argentina.
"How many more sunsets will you see?"
Years of Sunsets: Alpinist Editor Katie Ives ponders her obsession with mountaintop sunsets, and the question that a college professor posed to her years ago: "How many more sunsets will you see?" Many more, we hope, as we're big fans of Alpinist!
Mountain Photography Awards: The International Photography Contest of Mountain Activity, organized by the Club Vasco de Camping Elkartea, a mountaineering club in the Basque country, has announced the winners of this year’s competition. It brought together the work of 372 photographers from 58 countries.
Why are Sherpas Always Happy? A pretty poor choice of headline that doesn't do justice to the interesting question posed in this interesting Nepali Times article. Did Western ideas about Sherpas actually shape their interactions with outsiders?
Virtual Mount Everest Tour: Climber, filmmaker, and photographer Jake Norton presents a project 21 years in the making. The result is 47 panoramic images and 811 information popups that cover Everest and the surrounding peaks. Chockful of history of the landscape and its people.
Hobbs Kessler: Teenage American prodigy Hobbs Kessler wants to be the first person to run a sub-four-minute mile and climb 5.15 and V15. And he just might do it, as Kessler already climbs 5.14+ and has run a mile at that pace.
TikTok in the Arctic
The TikTok Star Living in the Arctic Circle: TikTok: We've no idea what it's all about, to be honest, but apparently Cecilia Blomdahl’s viral videos offer a window into an unfamiliar (for most folks) world full of polar bears, reindeer, and adventures on snowmobiles. They also offer surprisingly resonant insights for those of us who’ve just spent a year in quarantine.
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Just Got A Reprieve — But It’s Not Safe Yet: The United States recently announced it would suspend oil and gas leases in a pristine Alaskan ecosystem. But many environmental battles await the 400,000-hectare refuge.
He sheltered the hypothermic competitors in a cave and gave them food and clothing.
As the events of the ultra-marathon tragedy of May 23 continue to unravel, a humble hero has emerged from the chaos. Zhu Keming, a shepherd, braved the freezing winds and rains to save the lives of several competitors.
Zhu Keming was having a pleasant Saturday morning tending his sheep when suddenly high winds and hail forced him into a nearby cave that he used in emergencies.
He kept food and dry clothes in there, but he didn’t think he'd need them that day. Not long after, his eyes spotted a distant competitor struggling with a cramp in his leg. He ran through the rain and helped the man to safety. Soon, more runners found refuge in the cave.
But the most remarkable rescue was that of competitor Zhangye Xiaotao. He had fallen unconscious after sending an SOS via his GPS tracker. Xiaotao was reportedly on the mountain for two-and-a-half hours before Zhu found him. The shepherd had ventured out to help other runners and came upon Xiaotao. He quickly brought him to the cave to warm him up. Zhu lit a fire and gave the three men and three women he saved whatever warm clothes, food, and blankets he had.
Public rage about the loss of life continues in China. The event organizers in nearby Baiyin city had ignored the adverse weather warnings for the 100km cross-country race. Some believe that this was due to their desire to improve tourism in the depressed mining towns by turning them into prime spots for extreme sports.
The race stopped at two pm after competitors sent out pleas for help via social media. However, many competitors did not receive the notice. Had Zhu not been there, there would have been more than 21 casualties.
As a result of the tragedy, five other races have been canceled.
Twenty-one runners died yesterday during an ultra-marathon in northwest China. Freezing rain, hail, and plunging temperatures at an elevation of 2,000m abruptly turned a balmy day into a hypothermic ordeal for the 172 lightly-clad runners. The previous day had been remarkably hot.
The 100km-long cross-country race began at 9 am on Saturday in Gansu Province, near the Yellow River's popular Stone Forest.
About 1 pm, between the 20km and 31km mark, the weather changed dramatically, with hail, freezing rain, and strong winds.
Many runners were missing for hours
The wind became so strong that "it was hard to stand up straight and move forward," one survivor told Xinhua News. "When the wind was the strongest, I had to grab the ground with both hands to avoid being blown over.
"I felt nothing but cold...I fainted halfway down the mountain."
Officials eventually halted the race when it became clear that a number of participants had gone missing. While details are not completely clear, some runners lost their way during the storm. Around midnight, 11 hours later, some started posting videos on WeChat begging for help. By then, long after sunset, the temperature had dropped still further.
Local authorities launched a massive rescue operation, including helicopters and heavy vehicles. A further 1,200 rescuers searched the barrens hills and deep canyons on foot. Landslides that followed the heavy rain impeded their work, Reuters reported.
By 3 am on Sunday, 16 people had been found dead and five remained missing. Later that morning, the rescue headquarters raised the death toll to 21. The search continued until afternoon. By then, they had accounted for the remaining 151 runners. Eight are currently recovering in hospital.
The tragic events triggered an angry reaction since the forecast had predicted a strong temperature drop. Among the deceased was 31-year-old Liang Jing, one of the world's best ultramarathoners.
Tragic losses in the French Alps have shaken the European mountain community. On Saturday May 8, two avalanches killed a total of seven people in the Savoie region, near Col du Galibier and Mont Pourri. A few days earlier, on May 3, two avalanches killed five people in Isère and Hautes-Alpes.
The first May 8 avalanche took place in the morning near the village of Valloire, gateway to the Col du Galibier, the highest pass on the Tour de France. Four hikers between 42 to 76 years old perished in the slide. Remarkably, one survived without any injuries. The second avalanche killed three more people later in the day near Mont Pourri.
According to mountain guide Michel Pele, a southerly wind known as the foehn may have triggered the slides. The foehn is a dry, warm wind that sometimes carries sand from the Sahara to the Alps. It is possible, he says, that the grit prevented proper cohesion and made the snow generally unstable. Since last week, officials have warned against crossing slopes because of their instability and the 50 to 70cm of heavy new snow.
Thirty-five people have died since the beginning of the 2020-2021 ski season.
