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n THE E XPLORERS JOURNAL

contents SPRING 2021

features E XPL OR AT ION OR ADVENTURE?

U N D E R WA T E R C AV E S OF THE K AL AHARI

as we return to the field, may we be mindful of the journey

3-D mapping the largest subterranean lakes in the world

text and images by WADE DAVIS

images by JASON GULLEY

18

46

A RESTLESS GODDESS

40 YE ARS AND COUNTING

fear and reverence on the roof of the world

celebrating the first women of The Explorers Club

text and images by JIM DAVIDSON

by CATHERINE NIXON COOKE

34

62

text by VICKIE SIEGEL

regulars PRESIDENT’S LE T TER

EDITOR’S NOTE

E XPLOR ATION NE WS

4

6

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HARVESTING THE WILD

E X TREME MEDICINE

78

80

RE VIE WS

WHAT WERE THE Y THINKING?

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COVER: AMONG THE HULI OF THE TARI VALLEY, IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA, BECOMING A MAN IS TO JOIN A FRATERNITY OF TRIBAL BROTHERS, ALL WARRIORS BELIEVED TO BE DESCENDANTS OF A SINGLE MALE ANCESTOR. THE YELLOW AND RED FACE PAINTS ARE DERIVED FROM CLAY AND OCHRE, BOTH BELIEVED TO BE SACRED. PHOTOGRAPH BY WADE DAVIS.

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As an official travel partner of The Explorers Club, we’re honored to celebrate the centennial of The Explorers Journal. Re-ignite your spirit of adventure as we make our mark on the next 100 years, together.

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THE E XPLORERS JOURNAL

president’s letter

turning over the reins RICHARD WIESE President

When I joined The Explorers Club in 1989, I was thrilled to be accepted as a member, though intimidated by the stature of the explorers who had come before me and who were active in the Club. Not in my wildest dreams could I have imagined one day leading the organization. I was very fortunate to have a strong mentor take me under his wing.

Former president Fred McLaren had always been an inspiration for me. But he was equally a teacher, someone who helped me understand the Club more fully. And it is in this spirit that I welcome my successor, Richard Garriott de Cayeux—an astronaut and aquanaut, a person of tremendous accomplishment, and an explorer of immense vision. It is my great hope that all of you give him the same support and enthusiasm you have given me. We are very lucky to have Richard lead us, and also to guide us as we further navigate the impact of covid-19 and work aggressively to ensure that our Club becomes a more inviting institution that can share the adventure of exploration and the knowledge that comes from travel, research, and curiosity.

A recurring theme of exploration is the ability to adapt and come up with a Plan B. I will never forget the excitement of seeing

eight Apollo astronauts standing on the stage to the thunderous applause of our membership at the 2019 ECAD, nearly a year to the day before the pandemic hit, forcing us to cancel our 2020 event. While I would not wish a pandemic on anyone, obstacles can become great moments—and, in our case, a catalyst for significant change that has made us more vibrant and relevant, thanks in large part to our recent partnership with Discovery, which we forged on March 5, 2020.

Having such a formidable partner to amplify our message of exploration has been game changing. The relationship with Discovery and the $1-million-a-year grant program is sure to transform the lives of our members for years to come. The Club is poised to become a true world center of exploration for scientists and explorers of all backgrounds and persuasions.

When I wrote my first presidential column for The Explorers Journal during my first tenure back in 2002, I concluded that change was good, just ask a butterfly. So with that, I would like to thank the many people on many committees—and continents—who have made my job a joy. This farewell as president is not goodbye. I remain honored to be a member of the greatest Club on Earth.

HAVE CAMEL, WILL TRAVEL. RICHARD WIESE IN QATAR.

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THE E XPLORERS JOURNAL

editor’s note

deep awareness ANGELA M.H. SCHUSTER Editor-in-Chief

If the recent pandemic has taught us anything, it is that even the slightest imbalance on our planet’s equilibrium can have enormous consequences. In short, the global health crisis has brought into sharp focus the need for a greater understanding of how we interact with others and the world around us. It has also instilled a heightened sense of awareness, wonder, and curiosity that is enabling us to return to the field with eyes anew. And for The Explorers Journal, this moment offers a welcome, mindful reset as we embark on our second century of publication.

For this issue’s cover story, contributing editor Wade Davis has penned a “second installment” in a globespanning meditation on the meaning of exploration—one in which he focuses on what sets it apart from mere adventure. It is nourishing food for thought as we all move forward in the world.

High-altitude climber and environmental geologist Jim Davidson, author of the justreleased The Next Everest, shares his experiences and insights into the April 2015 earthquake that rocked the Roof of the World and resulted in the deadliest day on Everest. Having witnessed the event firsthand while preparing for a summit bid, he cautions, the quake was merely a down payment on a major seismic deficit.

We also venture into a pair of vast underground lakes that lie deep beneath the Kalahari Desert of Namibia, one of the most arid environments on Earth. There, a team of cavers and engineers from Bill Stone’s visionary enterprise, Stone Aerospace, have been putting a new AUV through its paces, mapping submerged voids well beyond the reach of humankind.

Collectively, this edition’s contributors deliver a deepened sense of awareness.

A SELFIE TAKEN AT THE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY TOWER OF BELÉM DURING THE GLOBAL EXPLORATION SUMMIT IN LISBON.

THE E XPLORERS JOURNAL

PRESIDENT

Richard Garriott de Cayeux

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

OFFICERS

PATRONS & SPONSORS

HONOR ARY CHAIRMAN

Jeff Bezos HONORARY PRESIDENT

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HRH Albert II, Prince of Monaco Robert D. Ballard, PhD Sylvia A. Earle, PhD Dan Goldin Gilbert M. Grosvenor Donald C. Johanson, PhD Richard E. Leakey, DSc Frederik D.A. Paulsen, PhD Bertrand Piccard, MD Roland R. Puton Johan Reinhard, PhD Edward P. Roski, Jr. George B. Schaller, PhD Kathryn D. Sullivan, PhD Don Walsh, PhD HRH Jigyel Ugyen Wangchuck

CL ASS OF 2022

V P, C H A P T E R S

L E A D E R O F E X P L O R AT I O N

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($500,000+) Mabel Dorn Reeder*

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Nancy L. Nenow VP, RESE ARCH & EDUCATION

Trevor Wallace

V P, S C I E N C E C O M M U N I C AT I O N

George Kourounis VP, CONSERVATION, WILDLIFE, SUSTAINABILIT Y

C L A S S O F 2 0 24

Mark J. Fowler

Devon Chivvis J.R. Harris Martin Kraus Timothy A. Radke, MD Mead Treadwell

TREASURER

Barbara Doran S E C R E TA R Y

Arnella Trent

APPOINTED DIRECTORS

OMBUDSMAN

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B E N E F A C T O R S O F E X P L O R AT I O N

($250,000+) Richard H. Olsen* Robert H. Rose* Michael W. Thoresen P AT R O N S O F E X P L O R AT I O N

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the explorers journal

The Explorers Journal © (ISSN 0014-5025) is published quarterly by The Explorers Club, 46 East 70th Street, New York, NY 10021. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to The Explorers Journal, 46 East 70th Street, New York, NY 10021.

PRESIDENT & PUBLISHER

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

SUBSCRIPTIONS

Richard Garriott de Cayeux

Jeff Blumenfeld James M. Clash Wade Davis, PhD David A. Dolan Michael J. Manyak, MD Milbry C. Polk David Rothenberg Carl G. Schuster Nick Smith Les Stroud

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Digital edition: One year, $29.95; single number, $8.95. Subscribe at: www.theexplorersjournal.org. Members of The Explorers Club receive The Explorers Journal as a perquisite of membership.

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Angela M.H. Schuster C R E AT I V E D I R E C T O R

Jesse Alexander COPY CHIEF

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P U B L I C AT I O N S C H A I R

Leon “Lee” V. Langan

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SUBMISSIONS

Manuscripts and books for review, as well as newsstand sales and advertising inquiries, should be sent to the Editor, The Explorers Journal, 46 East 70th Street, New York, NY 10021, telephone: 212-628-8383, fax: 212-288-4449, email: editor@explorers.org. All manuscripts are subject to review. The Explorers Journal is not responsible for unsolicited materials. The views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of The Explorers Club or The Explorers Journal.

The Explorers Club, The Explorers Journal, The Explorers Club Travel Program, World Center For Exploration, and The Explorers Club Flag and Seal are registered trademarks of The Explorers Club, Inc., in the United States and elsewhere. All rights reserved. © The Explorers Club, 2021.

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FOUNDED IN 1904, THE EXPLORERS CLUB IS A MULTIDISCIPLINARY PROFESSIONAL SOCIETY DEDICATED TO THE ADVANCEMENT OF FIELD RESEARCH, SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATION, AND THE IDEAL THAT IT IS VITAL TO PRESERVE THE INSTINCT TO EXPLORE. THE CLUB’S STEADFAST MISSION HAS BEEN TO ENCOURAGE AND PROMOTE SCIENTIFIC

EXPLORATION OF LAND, SEA, AIR, AND SPACE, WITH AN EMPHASIS ON THE PHYSICAL AND BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES. AS A PRIMARY AND PRESTIGIOUS CENTER FOR EXPLORATION AND EXPEDITION PLANNING, THE CLUB IS A FOCAL POINT AND UNIFYING FORCE FOR EXPLORERS AND SCIENTISTS WORLDWIDE, WITH 33 CHAPTERS SPANNING THE GLOBE.

For information regarding categories of membership— Fellow, Member, Friend, Term, and Student—and the process of election to The Explorers Club, visit us at www.explorers.org. The downloadable application sets

forth qualifications for all levels of membership. Additionally, inquiries pertaining to sponsorship and local chapters may be made directly through the Club’s Membership Office, 212-628-8383, ext. 23.

THE E XPLORERS JOURNAL

EXPLORATION NEWS EDITED BY JEFF BLUMENFELD

SHARKS ALL AGLOW

T H E L A R G E S T- K N O W N L U M I N O U S V E R T E B R A T E F O U N D O F F N E W Z E A L A N D Long thought to be a spectacular, albeit rare, event in the sea, bioluminescence may be more far more common than previously thought, especially at depth, according to marine biologist Jérôme Mallefet of the Earth and Life Institute, Université Catholique de Louvain.

Mallefet and his colleagues have documented dramatic bioluminescence in the kitefin shark (Dalatias licha), which grows to a length of 1.8 meters. The kitefin was one of three species of blue-green luminescent

deepwater sharks the team collected at depths greater than 600 meters at Chatham Rise off the east coast of New Zealand.

This study of three luminous shark species— Dalatias licha, Etmopterus lucifer, and Etmopterus granulosus—the authors contend, provides an insight into the diversity of shark bioluminescence and highlights the need for more research to help understand these deepsea inhabitants.

“Considering the vastness of the deep sea and

the occurrence of luminous organisms in this zone,” says Mallefet, “it is now more and more obvious that producing light at depth must play an important role structuring the biggest ecosystem on our planet.”

Commenting on their recent discovery, marine biologist David Gruber, who has been on the forefront of bioluminescence research, says, “This study highlights the many weird and wonderful things that remain to be learned about these apex predators.”

LATERAL AND DORSAL LUMINESCENT PATTERN OF THE DEEPWATER KITEFIN SHARK (DALATIAS LICHA). IMAGE COURTESY JÉRÔME MALLEFET, EARTH AND LIFE INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITÉ CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN.

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as a beautiful conception, translated by superb engineering into a device of genius,” Freeth tells THE EXPLORERS JOURNAL, adding that, “it challenges all our preconceptions about the technological capabilities of the ancient Greeks.”

FIRST FULL ASCENT OF MAUNA KEA A T L A S T: T H E A N T I K Y T H E R A M E C H A N I S M D E C O D E D Readers of this quarterly know just how obsessed we have been with recent research on the Antikythera Mechanism, a 2,000-yearold geared device, hailed as the world’s first celestial computer since its corroded remains were retrieved from a shipwreck off the coast of the Aegean island of Antikythera in 1901.

Made between the late third and early first centuries BCE, the mechanism, which is clearly of Greek manufacture, has continued to challenge scholars seeking to unlock its secrets, among them University College London mathematician Tony Freeth, who, for more than two decades, has made it his life’s work to reveal the genius of its design.

This March, his work paid off when he and his colleagues published a landmark analysis of the mechanism in Scientific Reports.

It reveals an ancient Greek astronomical compendium of staggering ambition, for the mechanism was capable of calculating the ecliptic longitudes of the Sun, Moon, and then-known planets—Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; the phases of the Moon; the synodic phases of the planets; the excluded days of the Metonic cycle; eclipses— possibilities, times, characteristics, years, and seasons; the heliacal risings and settings of prominent stars and constellations; and the Olympiad cycle. It is the first known device that mechanized the predictions of scientific theories, they say.

And it could have automated many of the calculations needed for its own design— the first steps to the mechanization of mathematics and science.

“Our work reveals the Antikythera Mechanism

Between February 1 and 3, Victor Vescovo and Clifford Kapono officially made the first “full ascent” of Hawaii’s Mauna Kea from its base some 5,116 meters down on the ocean floor to its summit 4,207 meters above sea level—for a total vertical gain of more than 9,300 meters— in one continuous journey.

Mauna Kea is a dormant volcano on the island of Hawaii and the highest point in the state. Most of the volcano is underwater, and when measured from its underwater base, Mauna Kea is the tallest mountain in the world.

The feat was undertaken through a combination of submersible, paddling in an open-water canoe, bicycling, and hiking. Save for the minimal electrical power needed for the submersible’s descent and ascent, the ascent was achieved using only human power. For more information: caladanoceanic.com.

AN EXPLODED VISUAL SHOWING THE COSMOS FUNCTIONS OF THE ANTIKYTHERA MECHANISM. IMAGE COURTESY TONY FREETH, THE ANTIKYTHERA MECHANISM RESEARCH PROJECT, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON.

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a whale of a time David Rothenberg talks with Hal Whitehead about his revolutionary research on how sperm whales learned to outwit hunters more than a century ago

THE E XPLORERS JOURNAL

HANDS DOWN, HAL WHITEHEAD IS ONE OF THE GREAT WHALE RESEARCHERS OF OUR TIME. IN HIS YOUTH, HE SAILED ACROSS THE PACIFIC, RECORDING SPERM WHALE CLICKS THAT, WHEN ANALYZED MONTHS LATER, ENABLED HIM TO ASSEMBLE THE DATA NECESSARY TO PUT FORTH THE IDEA, CONSIDERED RADICAL AT THE TIME, THAT WHALES HAVE CULTURE. IT IS NOT ONLY GENETICS THAT DETERMINES HOW THEY BEHAVE, HE CONTENDS, BUT KNOWLEDGE THAT USUALLY MATRIARCHAL GROUPS OF ANIMALS TEACH THE NEXT GENERATION, CREATING TRADITIONS THAT CARRY ON FOR HUNDREDS OF YEARS. WHITEHEAD HAS WRITTEN ELOQUENTLY ABOUT THESE IDEAS IN RECENT YEARS, IN SPERM WHALES (2003) AND THE CULTURAL LIVES OF WHALES AND DOLPHINS (2014), BUT IT IS HIS RECENT PAPER, PUBLISHED IN BIOLOGY LETTERS, THAT IS MAKING THE MOST WAVES. HE HAS TAPPED HISTORICAL DATA FROM WHALERS’ RECORDS TO DEMONSTRATE THAT SPERM WHALES LEARNED HOW TO AVOID HUMAN ATTACKS AND REDUCE THE OVERALL CATCH. THE FACT THAT THEY ARE CULTURAL ANIMALS HELPED THEM SAVE THEMSELVES. IN THE WAKE OF ITS PUBLICATION, I CAUGHT UP WITH WHITEHEAD AT HIS HOME IN NOVA SCOTIA.

DAVID ROTHENBERG: How were you able to assemble so much data about how sperm whales reacted to whalers 150 years ago?

HAL WHITEHEAD: I happened to be at a symposium at the University of Victoria in British Columbia a couple of years ago with several historians of whaling, when one of them, Ryan Tucker Jones, suggested that during the heyday of whaling, whales may have learned from each other ways to avoid being hunted. We know that the whalers were becoming very frustrated as the whales, who used to be easy to catch, were becoming far more elusive in just a few years’ time. I have studied whale culture for many years, so the possibility that information was being shared from whale to whale immediately interested me, but these stories were more or less anecdotal. That was until recently, when the early logbooks of the whaling industry were

digitized and made available for anyone who wished to work with them.

For the paper we just published, we chose to focus on the North Pacific because that was the last of the oceans to be exploited—after whalers had worked their way through the North Atlantic, South Atlantic, South Pacific, and Indian Ocean. They got to the North Pacific around 1818. So, we have a rare, accurate record of what happened in those very years when the whales first met the whalers. We now know from this wonderful data source that during those first years of exploitation, the animals were quite naive. They’d never met anything like a whaler before and suddenly the hunters appeared.

But the sperm whales quickly caught on and changed their behavior to evade capture.

DR: And in the voluminous whaling literature of the time, is it clear that sperm whales seemed to figure us out faster than other cetaceans?

HW: I haven’t run across anything saying this species is smarter than that species. Ryan Tucker Jones, of course, has written about right whales in Australia and New Zealand, and most of the data that has been gathered has been on bowhead whales in the Bering Strait. In both cases, whalers were finding it harder and harder to catch their prey.

AN 1837 INK AND WATERCOLOR BY WHALER OLIVER WILCOX ILLUSTRATING SPERM WHALING FROM THE SHIP CANTON ON THE JAPAN GROUNDS OF THE NORTH PACIFIC. FOUR WHALING BOATS HARPOONED SIX WHALES; THREE OF THOSE WHALES WERE KILLED AND THE OTHER THREE WERE LOST WHEN THE HARPOONS PULLED FREE OR BROKE. ONE WHALING BOAT, SHOWN IN THE LOWER LEFT, WAS DESTROYED. IMAGE COURTESY THE NEW BEDFORD WHALING MUSEUM.

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THE E XPLORERS JOURNAL

DR: What sets sperm whales apart? Is it their social way of life and the cooperative way in which they use sound?

HW: Since I do study sperm whales and have argued that they have a sense of culture, I probably did have, in the back of my mind, the idea that our guys are better than your guys. But I didn’t want to prejudge it. To my mind, a lot of what they’re all doing is simply being aware of each other. Their culture is related to social relationships and learning how to react to the presence, actions, and motivations of another species, namely humans who are whaling. They may simply be observing the behavior of different groups of their own species and changing their own behavior accordingly.

getting information from each other, which we now know well. Then you can bring the culture word in at that point because getting information from others and transferring it— that’s what culture is about.

DR: Do you think people who traditionally hunted whales would have been sympathetic to the idea that they have a culture, that they know what we’re doing. Would Inuit hunters say, “Oh, these whales, you know, they know what we’re up to. Be careful with what you say around them”?

HW: I haven’t done much reading of the primary sources from these people, but from the people who have, there seem to be indications that at least a few of them did have such thoughts. Whereas clearly many of them did not.

DR: Do you have any ideas about how this story should be best communicated? We know how easy it is to come to the conclusion that “the whales were smarter than the whalers. The whales figured this all out and outwitted humans.” How should we deal with such an intriguing story and ensure that we tell it right, so it won’t be immediately misinterpreted or exaggerated?

HW: I think if one focuses on behavior, what was actually happening, the data can remain accurate. The records show that the sperm whales stopped congregating in tight, slow-moving groups at the surface. They started moving faster, in different directions, particularly upwind. It is clear that kind of behavior would have made it a lot harder for people in small whale boats to catch them.

So first, there was this dramatic change in behavior, and second, it happened very quickly. And we see this in the dramatic decline in the success of the whalers. It went down by 60 percent in just three years!

The whales made these changes very rapidly and rather than ascribing this to their wonderful neurons, I would relate it to the fact that these are very social animals who are used to conveying information and

DR: When’s the last time you encountered a sperm whale?

HW: Just over a year ago. We were doing research in the Caribbean when covid hit. I am back in Nova Scotia, but our boat is still down there.

DR: Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future of whales, given how much more we’re learning about them?

HW: Most of them are reasonably well set up to survive. I mean, they’re mobile creatures. They can often change food sources.

They can migrate in different ways. They can learn to avoid things that harm them.

Compared with other creatures, at least some of them will probably make it, which is more than I might say about the fate of the human species.

A COPPER ENGRAVING BY WILLIAM JAMES LINTON, FROM THOMAS BEALE’S THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SPERM WHALE (LONDON, 1839), SHOWS SPERM WHALES FIGHTING THE CREW OF A WHALING SHIP. PRIVATE COLLECTION, IMAGE COURTESY ALAMY.

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EXPLORATION ADVENTURE? OR

as we return to the field, may we be mindful of the journey text and images by WADE DAVIS

THE E XPLORERS JOURNAL

I have spent my time in a small house on a hill, surrounded by artifacts and books, each with a story to tell. Settled in place, I recall in amazement the many lands I’ve known, astonished but also haunted by the ease with which I reached them, a compression of geography that has been both the blessing and curse of travel in our time.

The most geographically isolated place I recall is the small islet of Bodaluna in the Trobriand Islands, off the eastern coast of Papua New Guinea, which I reached with fellow travelers, having been invited as a lecturer aboard the National Geographic Endeavour in 2006. We sailed out of the rising sun, laid anchor for the morning, and landed in a fleet of zodiacs on an island of white sand that was in no place more than a meter above sea level.

Upon our arrival, an astonished group of villagers hastily adorned their hair with plumeria blossoms and cobbled together a traditional dance. It made for a colorful encounter for the ship’s passengers, yet something was clearly missing. The facility by which this travel prize had been secured diluted the experience, leaving it devoid of spice or sensation, emotion or spiritual memory. It was travel reduced to commodity, purchased but not really earned, a cold efficiency that left the paying guests talkative and content, even as they trudged back to the zodiacs at midday in a state of cultural and psychic disorientation.

All of this is to suggest the obvious. That it is the quality of a journey, not the remoteness of its destination, that lends meaning to travel, and it is time alone that allows a traveler to be transformed, which ultimately is the goal of every journey. In a cocoon of familiar comfort, a tourist flies to the most remote outpost of the planet in a day, with absolute certainty that he will be able to scurry back home in a week, just in time for a family wedding. The traveler, by contrast, is loyal to everywhere and nowhere, with home being the ground beneath one’s feet, and movement the natural way of things.

If there is a clear message emerging in the wake of the pandemic, it is this: Nature, for one, is asking us to be humble, to awaken at last to the realization that we are biological beings dwelling on a living planet, sharing its bounty with all sentient creatures, all forms of life. As we’ve seen in recent months, Nature regenerates at a remarkable rate—caiman once again darkening the sands of Baja California; wild boar in the streets of Barcelona; flamingos by the thousands in the wetlands of Mumbai; and wolves and bears returning to the valley floor at Yosemite. The canals of Venice are clear for the first time in modern memory.

In Colombia, the Río Medellín runs through the city as if a mountain stream. In Asia, city dwellers long shrouded in smoke and industrial haze in Delhi, Lahore, and Kathmandu are awakening for the first time to blue skies and white mountain summits scoring the horizons.

In the resilience of Nature lies the promise of a new dream of the Earth. The climate crisis takes on a new urgency. Our exposure and vulnerability call out for global action and change. In the light of this revelation, this new hope, what will become of travel, or the very notion of movement?

Like so many, I look back on my frenetic travel schedule pre-pandemic as if it were a violent hallucination. Not a week went by without a flight somewhere, often overnight, in a whirlwind of movement that had me celebrating the proximity of Washington’s National Airport as the single greatest feature of living in the nation’s capital!

For more than a year now, living on a small island within easy reach of Vancouver, a city I’ve not visited since the pandemic began,

OPENING SPREAD: YOUNG SAMBURU WOMEN GATHER AT SUNSET ON MOUNT MARSABIT, KENYA, TO CELEBRATE THE END OF THE RAINY SEASON. FACING PAGE: A YOUNG GIRL, HER HAIR ADORNED WITH PLUMERIA BLOSSOMS, ON BODALUNA, AN ISLET ON A CORAL ATOLL AT THE EASTERNMOST LIMIT OF THE KULA RING OFF PAPUA NEW GUINEA.

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and literally I drank from every stream, even from tire tracks in the road. Naturally, I was constantly sick, but even that seemed part of the process, with malaria and dysentery fevers that grew through the night only to break with the dawn. Every adventure led to another. At one point, I set out to traverse the Darién Gap. After nearly a month on the trail, I became lost in the forest for a fortnight without food or shelter. When I finally found my way to safety, I stumbled off a small plane in Panama with only the ragged clothes on my back and $3 to my name. I had never felt so alive.

With me on that adventure was a most colorful character, Sebastian Snow, a sometime journalist later eulogized in the British press as “an eccentric explorer…the last of the gentleman adventurers.” Sebastian comes to mind whenever I hear of someone rowing a skiff across the Atlantic, base-jumping from some impossible height, or dying on the northeast ridge of Everest while waiting in queue to attempt the Second Step.

Sebastian and I met in Medellín in 1974, shortly after he reached the city, having walked the length of South America from Tierra del Fuego. His destination was Alaska. As a boy, Sebastian broke his thigh playing rugby at Eton and doctors said he’d never walk again. His mission was to prove them wrong.

At 21, Sebastian followed the Amazon from source to mouth, a journey only made possible by those hired along the way, local guides who did the heavy lifting and generally kept him alive. His first book, My Amazon Adventure, includes a foreword

by General E. F. Norton, George Mallory’s close companion and the leader of the 1924

Over my many years at the National Geographic Society, I visited dozens of countries and dropped in on scores of strange and wondrous scenes, from the traditional navigators of Polynesia to the salt caravans of the Sahara; from the Peoples of the Anaconda in the northwest Amazon to the hunters of the northern ice in Greenland; and from the monks of Kathmandu to the thunderhoof shaman of Mongolia. In every case, a scientific quest served as a metaphor, a lens through which to interpret a culture and acquire personal experience of the other.

Hovering over all of these journeys, however, was the constraint of time, the call of domestic responsibilities, and the tyranny of professional obligations and schedules determined by budgets and deadlines. We may have fancied ourselves as sophisticated travelers, but in essence we were not far removed from those who flock to the banner of commercial operators. We traveled for the most part in comfort, with fixed times of departure and return. The experience was fully anticipated and the itinerary planned well in advance, if only to ensure that we would return with product in hand, be it a film, magazine article, or book.

When I was 20, by contrast, I left for South America with a one-way ticket, and no plans save a promise not to return to the States until Richard Nixon was out of office. I had just a small backpack of clothes, and two books: George H. M. Lawrence’s Taxonomy of Vascular Plants and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. In an early travel journal, I wrote: “Risk discomfort for understanding.”

In my 15 months away, I would make but a single phone call home, and that only after learning by telegram that my father had suffered a severe heart attack.

At the time I believed that bliss was an objective state that could be achieved simply by opening oneself unabashedly and completely to the world. Both figuratively

MAESTRO ÁNGEL MARÍA VILLAFAÑA, A MUSICIAN OF RARE GENIUS RECOGNIZED IN COLOMBIA AS A PATRIMONIO VIVO, A LIVING NATIONAL TREASURE, PHOTOGRAPHED AT BARRANCO DE LOBA, ON THE RÍO MAGDALENA.

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companion and “local talent.” I hardly qualified as a guide, for I knew little about where we were going, which didn’t concern Sebastian in the slightest. He courted trouble, just as he cultivated eccentricity, if only as fodder for his books.

Sebastian’s long walk had been sponsored by a British newspaper, and his only obligation was to write periodic dispatches for a column that appeared on an irregular basis. Just what he had to say in these reports was something of a mystery. In all his months on the road, he had never strayed from the tarmac of the Pan-American Highway. In Ecuador, he had been joined for a few days by his old friend, legendary British climber, Chris Bonington. After a day, Bonington took to the hills, walking cross-country to escape the boredom.

Sebastian spoke no Spanish and made no effort to pick up the language. If you speak the Queen’s English loud enough, he claimed, anyone will understand. He lived by this adage, which was amusing but didn’t inspire confidence that anything meaningful had been learned during his mostly solitary year’s sojourn. The book that ultimately emerged from his adventure, The Rucksack Man, features a breezy introduction by the well-known travel writer Eric Newby, another of Sebastian’s friends. Newby’s contribution, a tongue-in-cheek send-up of Sebastian, is as substantive as any passage in the book.

Toward the end of our time together, Sebastian and I met an American engineer in Panama who asked why he had bothered to spend a year walking north on a highway.

Sebastian, in a rare moment of reflection, described his journey as “an ongoingness into a neverendingness.” The American didn’t buy it. “Seems to me,” he quipped, “more like going from nowhere to nowhere and seeing how long it takes you.”

Ernest Hemingway once said that the most important credential for a writer is to have something to say that the world needs

British Everest expedition. Recalling his own experience with porters in Tibet, Norton went out of his way to downplay the role of Sebastian’s native companions, penning a disclaimer that speaks to a core conceit.

“Without the driving power of the European,” Norton wrote, “these feats are not within the scope of local talent.”

This was certainly true, but it was hardly an issue of character or the triumph of British pluck. The locals simply had other priorities in their lives, and, from their point of view, better ways of spending their days. Sherpas accompanied the British climbers in the 1920s because it’s what the job demanded, not because they had any interest in summiting Everest. The Shipibo were content to take Sebastian’s money and escort him downriver, with little concern about the purpose or fate of his journey.

By the time we met, Sebastian was 45, exhausted and well worn, having walked 14,000 kilometers in 11 months. My job was to lead him through the Darién Gap, a notorious stretch of rainforest and swamp that separates Colombia from Panama, the one roadless passage on his intercontinental itinerary. The role fell somewhere between

PREVIOUS SPREAD: AN ARHUACO FAMILY, ON PILGRIMAGE IN THE SIERRA NEVADA DE SANTA MARTA IN COLOMBIA, HAS GATHERED AROUND AN EVENING FIRE. AS THEY TRAVEL UP AND DOWN THE MOUNTAIN SLOPES, THEY REFER TO THEIR MOVEMENTS AS THREADS, SO THAT OVER TIME A COMMUNITY LAYS DOWN A PROTECTIVE CLOAK OVER THE EARTH. WHEN ARHUACOS PRAY THEY CLASP SMALL BUNDLES OF WHITE COTTON, MOVING THEIR HANDS IN SLOW CIRCULAR MOVEMENTS THAT RECALL THE MOMENT WHEN THE GREAT MOTHER SPUN THE UNIVERSE INTO BEING. HER COMMANDMENT WAS TO PROTECT EVERYTHING SHE HAD WOVEN. THIS WAS HER LAW. FACING PAGE: A YOUNG BARASANA LAD ON THE UPPER REACHES OF THE RÍO PIRÁ PARANÁ IN THE COLOMBIAN AMAZON. HIS CORONA OF OROPENDOLA FEATHERS IS AN EMBODIEMENT OF THE SUN, EACH YELLOW PLUME A RAY OF LIGHT.

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For my latest book, Magdalena: River of Dreams, I came to know the river, the Mississippi of Colombia, in all its dimensions. I experienced it in all months of the year, with every shift of the seasons, from the headwaters in the Macizo Colombiano to the sand and stones of the Caribbean shore. At no point, however, was I tempted to paddle the Magdalena from source to mouth, or to travel its length in a single journey, hitching rides perhaps on a series of barges and river boats. Admirable as such achievements might be, my goal was not to produce a study of self, an account of a personal journey. It was, instead, to write a biography of Colombia through the metaphor of the river that made possible the nation. As narrator, I would merely serve as a bridge between people and places, the present and the past.

When in doubt, an author should always get out of the way. Building a narrative around oneself is to travel writing what false heroics are to exploration.

In the fifth century BCE, the Greek historian Herodotus explored the edges of the known world. Upon his return to Greece, he recounted a story from the Persian court, a morning when the emperor, Darius, gathered representatives of two of his subject peoples, one a culture that cremated their dead, and the other a people that reputedly ate their dead. Darius asked each whether they might consider emulating the death rituals of the other. Both expressed horror at the thought.

Herodotus concluded from this the obvious: every culture favors its own traditions and looks down upon those of any other. Five centuries before the common

to hear. Sebastian was a good man, but he failed this simple test. He had followed a highway the length of a continent, while learning almost nothing of the people or the lands through which he’d moved. After so much effort, the story of his final journey, for sadly it would be the last, is distilled in a series of self-deprecating anecdotes that function largely to keep the narrative focused on the traveler, not the place.

French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss famously dismissed the entire genre of travel literature as nothing but “grocery lists and lost dog stories,” before going on to write perhaps the best travel book of all time, Tristes Tropiques. Still, he had a point.

Disregarded in its day and now long forgotten, The Rucksack Man, to be fair, was not the product of literary ambitions.

Sebastian’s genre was the Englishman out of his element, a perfect frame for his misadventures, recounted in his inimitable way. At 20, I’d never been a character in a book, and Sebastian could not have been more generous. Though I struggled to recognize myself in the stalwart companion he described, I certainly saw in his description a person I aspired to be. At an auspicious moment in a young life, Sebastian made me feel like I was somebody. He was very kind.

With the publication of The Rucksack Man, my writing appeared in print for the first time, albeit passages from a journal that Sebastian lifted and passed off as his own, which seemed at the time a fair exchange.

He obtained some much-needed content, while I saw my words alongside his, entire paragraphs, a juxtaposition that left me confident that if this mad but endearing Englishman could write books, so, too, could I. Only books, I promised in a flush of pride and purpose, that would have something to say, informed by original research and not xeroxing, written and not simply typed; a lesson learned from The Rucksack Man, perhaps to a fault.

CROSSING THE MACIZO COLOMBIANO, THE RUGGED KNOT OF MOUNTAINS THAT GIVES RISE TO THE THREE ANDEAN CORDILLERAS RUNNING THE LENGTH OF THE COUNTRY, AS WELL AS MANY OF THE NATION’S GREAT RIVERS, THE CAUCA AND CAQUETÁ, PUTUMAYO, PATRÍA, AND MAGDALENA.

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In Vedic scripture there is a notion that as a person passes through the stages of life, from childhood to youth, from householder to sage, there comes a time when he is freed of earthly ties, liberated to wander. While I am not about to renounce the world, or abandon my family, I do see this as a powerful metaphor. Travel as pilgrimage, with each step taking one closer to the goal, which is not a place but a state of mind, not a destination, but a path of illumination and liberation. That is the ultimate quest of the pilgrim.

In a marvelous essay, Where Heaven and Earth Come Closer, Eric Weiner writes that the goal of travel is to find and enter the “thin places,” those moments, for they exist in time as much as in space, “where the distance between heaven and Earth collapses and we’re able to catch glimpses of the divine.”

These encounters need not have anything to do with religious devotion. They are simply experiences that break open the mind, shatter convention, allowing one to abandon old assumptions and see and feel the world anew. In short, those transcendent moments when, for at least a beguiling instant, bliss does indeed appear to be an objective and achievable state of being.

As I contemplate travel in this new era, which mercifully is now upon us, I hope to find the courage to travel in such a way, perhaps down the Mother Ganga, from Kailash to Gangotri, across the Indo-Gangetic Plain to the sea. Or along the Silk Road, Beijing to Damascus, across the Sahara from the west, or south through the still unknown lands of Ethiopia. Perhaps across the wild reaches of Siberia, or along the length of the Andean Cordillera following the traces of the Inca roads that fall away like mercury into the mist of the cloud forests. As important as where to go will be how to travel—on the ground, unfettered by time, and utterly devoted to spending the last active years of a most fortunate and favored life in pursuit of knowledge and wisdom, revelation and joy.

era, this astute observer discerned the trait that more than any other has haunted humanity since the dawn of awareness: cultural myopia, the idea that our way is the right way and everyone else is a failure to be us, even if they don’t know it.

Herodotus observed but did not judge.

This is what made him so remarkable, and so vilified upon his return to Athens. Four hundred years after his death, the Greeks were still mad. Plutarch famously accused Herodotus of sympathizing with barbarians and, in doing so, betraying his own people.

Herodotus might well have avoided Plutarch’s wrath had he simply recounted what he ate for breakfast, the names of the horses that had carried his kit, or how long it had taken to swim a river previously unknown to the Greeks and thus newly discovered by him.

Happily, for history, Herodotus recorded instead what he learned, phenomena that had nothing to do with his personal experience, and what he saw beyond the shadow of self—the beauty of the land, the strange creatures of the marshes, the poetry of the people. He traveled as a sage, eyes wide open to wonder. His explorations took him beyond the exotic into new realms of knowledge and belief, the spiritual home of the curious, the limitless horizons of the human imagination as brought into being by culture. At the very dawn of Western civilization, Herodotus recognized the human legacy as the subject most worthy of his explorations.

PREVIOUS SPREAD: IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA, AMONG THE HULI OF THE TARI VALLEY, BECOMING A MAN IS TO JOIN A FRATERNITY OF TRIBAL BROTHERS, ALL WARRIORS BELIEVED TO BE DESCENDANTS OF A SINGLE MALE ANCESTOR. THE YELLOW AND RED FACE PAINTS ARE DERIVED FROM CLAY AND OCHRE, BOTH BELIEVED BY THE HULI TO BE SACRED. FACING PAGE: YOUNG BOYS CELEBRATE THE YAM HARVEST ON KITAVA, A SMALL ISLAND IN THE TROBRIAND ARCHIPELAGO, PAPUA NEW GUINEA.

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COURTING A

RESTLESS GODDESS fear and reverence on the roof of the world text and images by JIM DAVIDSON

AN EARTHQUAKE UNFOLDS A P R I L 2 5 , 2 0 15

LHOTSE (8,516 METERS) MOUNT EVEREST (8,848.86 METERS) CAMP 4

CAMP 3

NUPTSE (7,861 METERS)

CAMP 2

WEST SHOULDER (7,254 METERS)

AVALANCHES TOWARD CAMP 1 CAMP1

KHUMBU ICEFALL

LINGTREN (6,749 METERS)

AVALANCHE & WINDBLAST

BASE CAMP

INTO BASE CAMP PUMORI (7,161 METERS)

THE E XPLORERS JOURNAL

A MEMBER OF THE EXPLORERS CLUB SINCE 2014, JIM DAVIDSON IS A GEOLOGIST, CLIMBER, AND AUTHOR OF THE JUSTRELEASED THE NEXT EVEREST: SURVIVING THE MOUNTAIN’S DEADLIEST DAY AND FINDING THE RESILIENCE TO CLIMB AGAIN. FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT SPEAKINGOFADVENTURE.COM.

geologist, I was also acutely aware that the deadly quake was but a modest down payment on a substantial seismic deficit.

Cold air flowing southward from the Tibetan border swept a stinging breeze across my face. Just below the summit of 5,357-meter Gokyo Ri, the welcome rays of powerful morning sunshine finally reach Phinjo Sherpa and me. We plodded to the top, sat upon gray boulders, and listened to prayer flags fluttering in the wind.

A hundred glaciated peaks jabbed skyward in a high semicircle around us, and the Ngozumpa Glacier, the longest in Nepal at 36 kilometers, crept down the Gokyo Valley far below our feet. As a lifelong mountaineer, I noticed the banquet of snowy peaks surrounding us. Then, Phinjo and I both stared 25 kilometers eastward, where Everest towered above all.

Gazing upon the mountain’s soaring upper pyramid, I felt drawn to it as a needle is to a magnet. I knew how difficult the next 50 days of our Everest climb would be, as we acclimatized in preparation for our summit bid, which we ultimately achieved on May 22, 2017.

As a climber, that magical moment would prove bittersweet, for I topped out on the world’s highest peak with the traumatic memories of having been on the mountain that fateful April day in 2015 when the largest earthquake to hit Nepal in 81 years rocked the Himalayas. As an environmental

THE DAY OF THE QUAKE For 50 million years, the Indian continental plate has continued to push northward and slide beneath the Eurasian plate. The resulting uplift created the Himalayas. This subtle geologic process became quite apparent on the morning of April 25, when a 7.8-magnitude earthquake rippled outward from an epicenter beneath Gorkha, Nepal, some 225 kilometers west of Everest.

Just before the quake I had been resting in my tent at Camp 1 (6,000 meters), having climbed up through the crumbling Khumbu Icefall. Jolted alert, I heard the trouble before I even felt it. Deep rumbling noises signaled the simultaneous start of giant avalanches on two mountain walls that both terminated just a few hundred meters away. As those slides raced 1,000 to 2,000 vertical meters down toward our campsite, the roaring grew louder. When the quake’s first energy wave transmitted through the Khumbu Glacier beneath us, it momentarily lifted the entire ice sheet, then dropped it back. With each passing shock wave, our tent rose and fell as if it were a life raft riding over ocean swells.

The glacier continued to spasm, but my attention shifted to the avalanche air blasts crashing into Camp 1. They smothered our camp in a white, swirling windstorm of pulverized ice dust. I had studied avalanches, so

OPENING SPREAD: THE VIEW FROM CAMP 1 ON MOUNT EVEREST LOOKING EAST UP THE WESTERN CWM. WHILE THE 8,516-METER LHOTSE RISES IN THE DISTANCE, THE SUMMIT OF EVEREST—CHOMOLUNGMA, THE GODDESS MOTHER OF THE WORLD—REMAINS HIDDEN TO THE LEFT.

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avalanche debris to recover medical equipment from the destroyed field hospital. I made observations around Base Camp and talked to survivors in an effort to determine what happened. I later integrated the information with photos and videos that I and others made before, during, and after the quake to better dissect and understand the mechanics of what happened.

I knew those lateral winds meant the slides were heading right toward us.

I burst from the tent to look, but midday clouds hid the approaching monsters. A moment later, the air thickened with ice particles. I couldn’t breathe outside, so I crawled back into the tent and waited for the rushing avalanches to arrive. The maelstrom continued for three long minutes as I captured video of air-driven debris waves washing over our tent.

Despite the earthquake and avalanches, no one was killed or injured in Camp 1ne or in Camp 2 higher up. For those at Everest Base Camp, about 650 meters below us, they were not as fortunate. We soon learned that a gigantic avalanche had cut loose far above them and overrun the middle of base camp. A tsunami of wind, ice, and rocks bulldozed a swath through the tent community. When the hurricane-force winds rolled through, they destroyed tents, picked up gear and people, and then launched it all downwind across the glacier. About 70 Base Camp residents were injured, and, sadly, 18 people died that day. A nineteenth person died days later from their injuries, making the day of the quake the deadliest on Everest.

The quake also wiped out our only descent route from Camp 1 by destroying the network of fixed ropes and ladder bridges in the treacherous icefall. Along with about 180 other climbers in Camps 1 and 2, I was temporarily trapped on the mountain. When the weather cleared the following day, several helicopters were able to move the wounded from Base Camp to nearby medical clinics.

That afternoon, a 6.8-magnitude aftershock rattled Nepal, releasing more avalanches in our direction. During a limited window of favorable weather on April 27, those same choppers extracted all of us from above the Khumbu Icefall.

Soon after landing in Base Camp, my teammates and I dug by hand through rocky

ANATOMY OF A DISASTER At 11:56 AM Nepal Standard Time, the earthquake shook loose a massive ice cliff from a long ridge crest that runs high above Everest Base Camp. That jagged ridge connects two peaks, Pumori and Lingtren. Speculation existed that the collapse came from the low saddle along the Pumori–Lingtren ridge, but video and photographic evidence does not support that. Also, if it had started there, the landslide would have entered camp farther north, in the upper Base Camp, than it did.

Topographic data, the slide path’s position, and my photographs of the avalanche’s crown line all indicate that the starting zone was the north ridge of Pumori, farther south than that low saddle.

The collapsed ice and rock tumbled more than 1,000 vertical meters as the slide ran one kilometer laterally along the steep eastern face of Pumori. When the fast-moving debris wave hit the valley floor northwest of Base Camp, its enormous energy drove it another kilometer laterally over rough, uneven scree slopes. That transport may have been aided by a layer of air trapped beneath the debris cloud.

EVEREST BASE CAMP DURING THE SPRING 2017 CLIMBING SEASON. ON APRIL 25, 2015, A DEADLY ROCK AND ICE AVALANCHE OVERRAN THE MIDDLE PORTION OF BASE CAMP WHILE THE ACCOMPANYING WINDBLAST SCATTERED DEBRIS FAR OUT ONTO THE WHITE ICE OF THE KHUMBU GLACIER.

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“Momentum and wind combined to blast rocks, ice chunks, and snow into Base Camp like cannon fire.”

coauthors. Instruments atop Kala Patthar, a 5,545-meter peak, some 4 kilometers south of Base Camp, detected three atypical waves of down-valley winds. These are interpreted as deflected air-blasts rushing southwest down the Khumbu Valley, which is consistent with what my teammates in Base Camp experienced. Simultaneously, the weather station also recorded a rapid and temporary 50 percent decrease in solar radiation due to the large airborne debris cloud created by the avalanche.

Collectively, the earthquake, the collapse, the notch, and Base Camp’s position all combined to focus the avalanche force, amplify it, and aim the blast right into camp. Rocky landslides have impacted the south-side Base Camp before, evinced by photographs from previous expeditions and a glaciology report, which indicate that several large landslides have run through the Base Camp area during the past 70 years.

Perhaps more important, data suggest that the tectonic unrest is far from over. The 7.8-magnitude Gorkha quake released only a portion of the seismic strain that has been building in the region for centuries and it is abundantly clear that a significant backlog of unreleased energy and tectonic movement remains.

Just before reaching camp, the slide apparently squeezed through a low notch in the lateral moraine ridge. The reduced cross-sectional flow area of that notch helped accelerate the slide’s velocity, and it directed the flying debris right into the middle of camp. The impact force was powerful enough to snap wooden prayer poles that were 12 centimeters in diameter.

Momentum and wind combined to blast rocks, ice chunks, and snow into Base Camp like cannon fire. Duffle bags, gear barrels, and people were blown several hundred meters southeast out of camp and across the Khumbu Glacier. The resulting debris field was roughly triangular, narrowest at the debris-smeared notch, and widest at the field’s distal end on the white glacial ice. That debris field covered more than 4 hectares and consisted of pulverized ice, broken gear, and scattered belongings.

An automated weather station nearby noted unusual changes in the minutes after the quake, according to a recent paper in High Altitude Medicine & Biology by G.W.K. Moore and four

JUMBLED, SHIFTING BLOCKS OF THE KHUMBU ICEFALL RISE 650 METERS ABOVE TWO CLIMBERS.

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PART 2

RESPECT FOR A

RESTLESS GODDESS text and images by JIM DAVIDSON

bid—with more than 5,100 individuals having successfully touched the top of the world, according to the Himalayan Database— making trash management on the peak more challenging than ever.

Those first Everest expeditions typically burned, buried, or tossed their trash into out-of-sight spots such as excavated pits or glacial crevasses. Environmental awareness began to take hold during the early 1970s when wilderness travelers started to

Spring 2021 marks the centennial of the first British Mount Everest Reconnaissance Expedition, whose members likely gave little thought to their environmental impact on a sacred peak, revered by Tibetans as Chomolungma (“Goddess Mother of the World”), and known to Nepalis as Sagarmatha (“Head in the Great Blue Sky”).

But then again, in those early years, human presence on the mountain remained minimal, with only eight expeditions journeying to the mountain in the first two decades following that first British foray—and only a dozen or so prior to Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay’s historic first ascent on May 29, 1953. Since then, however, there has been an exponential growth in the number of climbers in search of a summit

THE VIEW LOOKING DOWN AFTER SUMMITTING CHOMOLUNGMA ON MAY 22, 2017. MORNING SUNLIGHT ILLUMINATES THE TRIANGULAR EASTERN FACE OF LHOTSE BELOW, WHILE TWO CLIMBERS IN THE FOREGROUND BEGIN THE 3,500-METER DESCENT TOWARD BASE CAMP AND, EVENTUALLY, HOME.

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$4,000 trash deposit, which is refunded once all refuse has been brought down for recycling and proper disposal. In 2014, Nepal further mandated that every Everest climber bring down at least 8 kilograms of garbage. My guide, PK Sherpa from Phortse, and I both carried down our allotments in 2017, and we sorted and recycled the waste at a makeshift SPCC station at the foot of the Khumbu Icefall.

Still, trash remains a challenge, particularly when it comes to the removal of refuse locked in the ice on Everest’s windswept slopes. Seasonal melting and glacial recession tend to cause the Khumbu Glacier to disgorge old trash from previous decades, making it easier to collect. Unfortunately, ill-informed media have often published photographs of these localized impacts with flamboyant headlines about Everest being covered with trash as if this represented the whole of the mountain. While such evocative claims might fuel indignation or sell newspapers, I can say from firsthand experience they are far from accurate.

Over the course of my four trips to the Khumbu Valley between 1992 and 2017, I witnessed a dramatic improvement in the trash management situation. And by 2018, the SPCC reported the Khumbu Valley had 106 public garbage bins, nine nonburnable garbage collection centers, five waste burning chambers, and two waste management facilities—in Lukla and in Namche Bazaar.

And this spring, the Nepali government has announced a plan to have the army lead a cleanup effort on six popular peaks, including Everest.

More and more mindful travelers are now requiring their guide company to remove all wastes associated with the trip from the Khumbu and transport it back to Kathmandu for better disposal, a pattern likely to continue. When it comes to protecting special places like Chomolungma, we can do better, and we should.

adopt a “pack it in, pack it out” mantra that in time began to be strictly enforced. While this ethos dramatically reduced the garbage heaped upon Everest’s majestic slopes, it did little to address the half century of debris that had already piled up. Clearly, far more needed to be done.

The first trash cleanup program in the Everest area was launched in 1975 when American students from Evergreen State College and the Nepali high-altitude workers who accompanied them picked up garbage discarded by previous expeditions. Since then, at least 33 Everest expeditions made environmental cleanup a cornerstone of their trip between 1975 and 2020. Though waste removal estimates are approximate, by my calculation, at least 170,000 pounds of refuse have been taken from Base Camp and the upper slopes. The actual total is likely higher as I could not find waste recovery estimates for seven of those expeditions. And more garbage has been informally picked up for years by eco-conscious Everest climbers, both local and foreign.

Complementing these efforts has been formalization of local measures to control and reduce trash, which began with the establishment of the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC) in 1991. For several years, creative social systems also emerged to pay high-altitude workers a bounty for any garbage they brought down: six dollars for oxygen bottles and four dollars for every 10 kilograms of other trash carried off Everest. In the 30 years since, almost all the deserted oxygen cylinders had been removed from the mountain. By the time of my 2017 climb to the summit, I saw very few discarded bottles lying about.

Since 1993, the Nepali government has required that all Everest expeditions pay a

THE RARELY VISITED WEST FACE OF NUPTSE (7,861 M) SOARS 2,300 METERS DIRECTLY ABOVE EVEREST BASE CAMP.

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UNDERWATER CAVES KALAHARI OF THE

3-D mapping the largest subterranean lakes in the world text by VICKIE SIEGEL images by JASON GULLEY

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HARASIB DRAGON’S BREATH

K ALAHARI DESERT AND BASIN

A FELLOW OF THE EXPLORERS CLUB SINCE 2017, SPELEOLOGIST VICKIE SIEGEL WORKS AT THE INTERSECTION OF AUTONOMOUS ROBOTICS, CAVE EXPLORATION, POLAR RESEARCH, AND PLANETARY SCIENCE. IN ADDITION TO CONDUCTING RESEARCH IN ANTARCTICA AND GREENLAND, SHE HAS BEEN EXPLORING AND MAPPING CAVE SYSTEMS IN SOUTHERN MEXICO. JASON GULLEY, AN ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA, IS ALSO A PHOTOGRAPHER SPECIALIZING IN SCIENCE, ENVIRONMENTAL, EXPEDITION, AND UNDERWATER IMAGERY, AS WELL AS A CAVE DIVING AND REBREATHER INSTRUCTOR. THE EXPEDITION TO THE K ALAHARI WAS FUNDED BY GRANTS FROM THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY AND SCHMIDT MARINE TECHNOLOGY PARTNERS. THE TEAM WOULD LIKE TO THANK EQUIPMENT SPONSORS SEACRAFT AND BURNHAM POLYMERIC, FARM HARASIB, CHRIS STEENK AMP, AND DON AND ANDRE SHIRLEY. INTERACTIVE 3-D MAPS OF THE CAVES ARE AVAILABLE ONLINE AT EXPLORE.STONEAEROSPACE.COM.

passage. After rigging a series of rope drops, they entered a vast chamber containing an enormous subterranean lake—which would turn out to be the largest in the world.

Dubbed Dragon’s Breath Cave, it is located, incongruously, beneath the Kalahari Desert of northern Namibia—known in its native Tswana as “the waterless place.”

In the three decades since its discovery, numerous expeditions, led by the world’s preeminent cave divers, have attempted to explore the full depth and extent of this remarkable place, yet until recently the limit of Dragon’s Breath remained unknown.

In 1986, South African speleologist Roger Ellis and a team of technical divers were searching for new cave diving sites when they came upon a narrow mist-emitting fissure in an unassuming outcrop of jagged dolomite. They climbed down 5 meters into the sloping hallway of a humid cave

OPENING SPREAD: FOR MORE THAN THREE DECADES, DIVERS HAVE PUSHED THE DEPTHS OF DRAGON’S BREATH AND HARASIB CAVES. NOW, THE AUV SUNFISH IS GOING BEYOND. FACING PAGE: SUNFISH IS LOWERED DOWN THE OPEN SHAFT OF HARASIB CAVE IN A RESCUE LITTER.

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and rejoin, a place where complex navigation choices must be made. Trial after trial, divers positioned the boxy orange AUV at the entrance and then let go as the robot acted on our simple command: travel 200 meters northward, then return home. It explored a maze of tunnels until it reached a point 200 meters north. Then it came home. This felt like a success, and it was. But the test site was Peacock Springs, a popular spot where many cave divers receive their first lessons in the sport. Its map has existed for decades and a yellowed copy is shellacked on a tabletop at a diner down the road. Peacock was a great test site, but it was by no means “unexplored.” The next step was to put the AUV through its paces where it really counted, ideally somewhere that no one has ever been.

Dragon’s Breath Cave was just the ticket.

I enlisted Bill to ping some colleagues to see if he could find out more about the cave. We were soon in contact with Don and Andre Shirley, South African cave divers who knew Dragon’s Breath well and would be invaluable in planning an expedition there.

Thousands of nautical miles and eight time zones stretch between Texas and South Africa and we bridged this gap with a broken and distorted Skype call.

Prior to our conversation, I’d prepared a list of talking points under the rubric “How to Convince the Shirleys This is Not Crazy.”

We were scarcely beyond the introductions when Don not only eagerly agreed that Sunfish should map Dragon’s Breath, but also excitedly mentioned there was another cave just 3 kilometers away called Harasib, and that we should plan to map that one as well. It was also quite deep, and rumors

I first became aware of the cave in 2017 when an ACL tear in my knee brought an abrupt end to my participation in a caving expedition in Mexico’s Cueva Chevé. Finding myself couch-bound back in Texas, I nonetheless followed the team’s progress via Iridium texts from Oaxaca. Days of forced downtime during recovery brought hours of streaming murder mysteries and nature films.

Eventually, I stumbled across a documentary on the Kalahari Desert, which included a brief segment on “the largest underground lake in the world.” The footage was striking.

As a caver rappelled down a single rope, freehanging in darkness, and landed within a rubber raft on the lake’s glassy surface, the narrator waxed poetic about a cavern so vast and waters so deep that explorers were unable to find the cave’s end. Quick research revealed that the description was not just television hyperbole—a rudimentary map showed that divers had descended to a depth of 132 meters without discovering an end—and going any farther pushed against the limits of human deep-diving physiology.

While not a cave diver per se, I am nevertheless a caver who happened to be in a unique position to meet this challenge.

Since 2006, I’ve been a part of an engineering startup founded by Explorers Club fellow and noted speleologist, Bill Stone. Through a series of NASA grants, his company, Stone Aerospace, has designed, built, and field-tested robotic systems geared toward exploration in extreme environments, particularly on the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn.

One of our latest developments was an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) we have named Sunfish, a crafty little bot that can explore and map complex three-dimensional spaces using sonar. It also had the potential to revolutionize underwater exploration.

Months earlier, we had taken Sunfish to Florida cave-diving country. We wanted to test the prototype and its exploration behaviors in a place where tunnels branch

PREVIOUS SPREAD: ELECTRICAL ENGINEER JOHN HARMAN PAUSES HIS RAPPEL TO WATCH SUNFISH SWIM AWAY FROM THE FLOATING LAUNCH PLATFORM IN DRAGON’S BREATH. FACING PAGE: THE TEAM RUNS THROUGH SYSTEM CHECKS AT THE WATER SURFACE WITHIN HARASIB CAVE.

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PROFILE VIEW - NS SECTION LAND SURFACE (40 M DIAMETER PIT)

LASER SURVEY WATER SURFACE 122 M [ 0 ]

THE 120 M CEILING CHAMBER 2019 80 M X 100 M X 300 M MULTIBEAM UNDERWATER MAPPING

LIMIT OF HUMAN EXPLORATION 162 M, JULY 2016

387 M [ 265 ]

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WATER DEPTH: 120 M

WATER DEPTH: 265 M 100 M

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A winch did the work of lowering and raising our gear between the top of the pit and the staging area on the beach. Wrapped in a rescue litter, Sunfish was carefully lowered and then hand carried to our floating launch platform. Back on the surface, a sunshade was strung across an old shed frame and a table was set up as mission control. We often keep a thin fiber-optic cable attached to Sunfish. This micro-tether spools out from the robot’s payload bay and enables “supervised autonomy,” wherein the robot explores and maps on its own, but the software team can observe the data feed and intervene if something goes awry, or if an observer wishes to investigate a feature more closely. The fiber-optic cable also provided voice comms between mission control on the surface and the team in the cave. We ran this line down the pit and setup was complete.

The following day, we began our exploration in earnest, with the familiar routine of the launch checklist snapping the team into focus despite our exotic surroundings. We released the robot into the water. It motored away a few meters and spun in a precise pirouette. Sunfish’s primary mapping instrument, a multibeam sonar, points fixedly out from its port side. The AUV is extremely maneuverable, however, and able to map in any direction by spinning and rolling to paint the fan-shaped swath of sonar pings across the walls around it. The bot has an excellent handle on its “pose,” on where it is and how it is oriented in three-dimensional space, so it can stitch these millions of data points together and a 3-D map begins to emerge. Sunfish will then begin to analyze.

Where are walls? Where is empty space?

What direction can I move to get closer to my goal? A unique swimming sequence then unfolds: spin, analyze, aim, advance, spin, analyze, aim... I’ve spent countless hours watching this routine enacted in the animated visualizer screen used to monitor the bot’s progress. Now, seeing it descend into

suggested the two caves might be connected. As soon as he asked, “When will you be arriving?” I flipped the page in my notebook and the planning began.

By August of 2019, we found ourselves in Namibia with a team of field roboticists, cave divers, and our little orange Sunfish robot whom the divers simply dubbed “the Fish.”

We decided to start with Harasib. A 4×4 track scales the flank of a rocky hill and stops just short of an oval-shaped pit opening 40 meters across. At the rim of the pit, an old well pump—a large, machined mass of pre-nuclear steel—sits inactive. On the opposite side of the pit a series of hand-forged, swinging iron ladders descend 120 meters, traversing free-hanging space for much of the route. The rungs end at a steep “beach” that slopes down to the water. This beach is merely a shoulder in the wall of the pit. The shaft continues uninterrupted and the sheer rock walls plunge straight down as deep as squinting eyes can see into clear blue water.

As modern cavers who cherish both our gear and our lives, we eschewed the potential for adventure offered by the aging ladders and instead rigged ropes to rappel down. Sunfish took yet another route. Chris Steenkamp, the proprietor of Namibia’s lone dive shop who facilitates the expeditions to Harasib and Dragon’s Breath, has made an art of getting hundreds of pounds of equipment into the shaft and back out again. He strung a steel cable across the mouth of the pit that was rigged with a series of tag lines, pulleys, and a plastic 55-gallon barrel-turned-haul-bucket.

IN THIS POST-PROCESSED MAP OF HARASIB, GENERATED FROM DATA GATHERED BY SUNFISH’S EXPLORATION, THE COLOR GRADIENT FROM RED TO BLUE INDICATES INCREASING DEPTH. THE RED AREA ABOVE THE WATER SURFACE LINE IS THE UPPER, AIR-FILLED PORTION OF THE CAVE, WHERE CAVE GEOMETRY WAS MEASURED BY A HANDHELD LASER RANGEFINDER. EVERYTHING BELOW THE WATER SURFACE WAS MEASURED BY THE MULTIBEAM MAPPING SONAR ON SUNFISH.

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“We had entered a very large and entirely unexpected chamber 80 meters wide and more than 100 meters high.”

rewarded with exclamations from topside.

For a moment it had seemed the tunnel might pinch closed…then Sunfish passed through a constriction and suddenly the sonar pings toward the roof shot off out of range as the ceiling went up into a tall dome. We had entered a very large and entirely unexpected chamber 80 meters wide and more than 100 meters high. The euphoria of first discovery is an experience that cavers chase and exploration by robotic proxy still brings exhilaration.

Rapt, we continued with Sunfish down the sloping chamber floor toward the apparent end of the cave at 265 meters underwater.

Our giddiness was quickly chastened when the depth sensor’s maximum range was exceeded and, now giving an overly optimistic depth of -∞, crashed the software’s navigation solution. A reboot was required, an anxious operation as the battery power dwindled. But Sunfish returned home, as always.

Now a bit wiser, we were ready to move onto Dragon’s Breath.

Harasib’s still, clear water, I realized that I had never watched its behaviors firsthand. We’ve worked with Sunfish in murky lakes, under ice in Antarctica, in Florida caves—always the robot is hidden from direct observation.

But now, here it was descending farther with each cycle but still very much in sight. While those of us underground watched hypnotized as the robot’s lights grew fainter with its descent, the crew on the surface felt a growing unease. This eventually made its way down the comms fiber, in the form of a question.

Should we let the bot keep going?

Still watching Sunfish’s light complete a spin, I blinked, confused.

“Um. This is the deepest we’ve ever been,” the topside voice continued.

As a team, we’ve learned that prolonged discussions drain battery reserves so sitreps are terse. The passage continues downward.

Battery charge is acceptable. We were now deeper than all previous expeditions had been able to probe in Harasib…and beyond diver rescue. I looked to Bill, half out of habit. His company would incur a significant financial loss if the bot didn’t come home. He looked back at me and shrugged. “This was your idea, it’s your call.”

Exploration beyond the range of humans was what we came here to do. A deep breath and we let Sunfish continue. We were soon

PREVIOUS SPREAD: SUNFISH THRUSTS TO THE SURFACE AT THE COMPLETION OF A MAPPING MISSION IN DRAGON’S BREATH. FACING PAGE: GIVEN THE TIGHT FIT IN THE UPPER REACHES OF DRAGON’S BREATH, THE AUV WAS SWATHED IN FOAM SLEEPING PADS AND THE RESCUE LITTER FOR A PROTECTED JOURNEY TO THE LAKE.

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PROFILE VIEW - NS SECTION

LAND SURFACE

THE LAKE CHAMBER

LASER SURVEY WATER SURFACE

59 M [ 0 ]

MULTIBEAM UNDERWATER MAPPING

LIMIT OF HUMAN EXPLORATION 132 M, JULY 2015

264 M [ 205 ]

PL AN VIEW

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100 M LAKE CHAMBER WATER SURFACE PERIMETER

WATER DEPTH: 205 M

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that the mammoth passage does run north, its curved roof arches across a span 175 meters wide. The floor below is a slope of breakdown boulders, some the size of houses. But contrary to decades of speculation, Dragon’s Breath did not continue for kilometers, nor did it ever connect to Harasib.

The huge tunnel narrows and the bedrock ceiling meets the boulder floor at the end of the cave 500 meters from the edge of the lake and 205 meters underwater. The anticlimactic ending doesn’t diminish this remarkable cave—its enormous lake surface visible at the waterline representing only a quarter of the cave’s footprint.

The sonar data from the submerged passages in Harasib and Dragon’s Breath were post-processed into full 3-D maps. In order to include the upper, air-filled section of each cave, we used an augmented laser rangefinder that incorporates measurements of compass bearing and inclination along with distance, to simulate a crude LIDAR system. Bill and several volunteers painstakingly made thousands of these survey shots and these were added to the sonar data to create maps from the cave entrances to their underwater termini. All told, we found Harasib Cave to be 387 meters deep (265 of that underwater), with a surprising offset in the shaft and huge parallel chamber. Dragon’s Breath from surface to deepest point is 264 meters (205 underwater). Together these caves hold more than 4 million cubic meters of water just beneath the surface of one of the most arid environments on Earth.

The expedition brought together a unique team of roboticists, divers, and explorers to achieve something that neither robot nor human could have accomplished alone.

Sunfish is the first autonomous system to truly explore unknown places inside the Earth. Exploration of these caves opens up many doors to where we can go next as we continue to push exploration technology.

Early in the planning, Chris had insisted on building a cardboard mock-up of Sunfish to practice passing through the cave. The first time I saw the entrance to Dragon’s Breath, I understood why. In contrast to Harasib’s gaping pit, the entrance to Dragon’s Breath is a 45-centimeter-wide crack. The fissure is negotiated with an awkward ladder and from there the cave opens into a wide hallway, followed by a series of rope drops and traverses through body-tight constrictions before opening up above the 100-meter-by-200-meter lake surface. The cave was named for the hot and humid air that, depending on the external barometric pressure, can “exhale” from the lake chamber. You descend into this sticky heat somewhere around the second rappel.

It was a full day’s work to maneuver Sunfish, bundled once again in the litter, through the squeezy upper cave and down, finally, into the enormous lake chamber.

With a floating launch platform anchored to the wall we were ready to proceed. Previous exploration suggested that Dragon’s Breath would descend as a large slope and that the way on was likely to the north, though no one could say for certain. “The passages are too big to see much,” the divers said, “the walls are too far away. We couldn’t swim that far at those depths.”

Given the sheer size of the chamber, exploration of Dragon’s Breath took place in stages. Over the course of three missions Sunfish mapped first the east side, then the west side of the lake, and then down the main descending tunnel. We discovered

THE DRAGON’S BREATH MAP, POST-PROCESSED FROM SUNFISH SONAR DATA. THE AIR-FILLED AREA ABOVE THE WATERLINE WAS AGAIN MEASURED WITH A LASER RANGEFINDER. THE SMALL AREA BOUNDED BY THE BLACK LINE IS THE LAKE SURFACE THAT CAN BE SEEN IN THE MAIN CHAMBER. EVERYTHING BEYOND IS UNDER ROCK.

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40 YEARS COUNTING AND

celebrating the first women of The Explorers Club

by CATHERINE NIXON COOKE

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CATHERINE NIXON COOKE, A MEMBER OF THE EXPLORERS CLUB SINCE 1984 AND THE RECIPIENT OF ITS SWEENEY MEDAL FOR CLUB SERVICE, IS THE AUTHOR OF SEVEN BOOKS, INCLUDING IN SEARCH OF TOM SLICK: EXPLORER AND VISIONARY. SHE IS A MEMBER OF THE WOMEN’S 40TH ANNIVERSARY COMMITTEE, CELEBRATING FEMALE MEMBERS OF THE EXPLORERS CLUB THROUGH MONTHLY PROGRAMS, A FALL SYMPOSIUM, AND THE NEW PATHFINDERS FILM, WHICH PREMIERES THIS SPRING.

back. Undeterred by the social mores of their times, Isabella Bird, Annie Smith Peck, Gertrude Bell, Harriet Chalmers Adams, Nellie Bly, Josephine Peary, and even Calamity Jane are just a few names on a long list of female explorers who changed both history and the world’s perception of women taking to the field. Yet it wasn’t until 1981 that women would be admitted as members of The Explorers Club, following a major push by then president Charles F. Brush III, which was met with resistance.

As the debate raged, astronomer Carl Sagan wrote an eloquent letter of support to the board, concluding with a strong warning that “if membership in The Explorers Club is restricted to men, the loss will be ours.”

When the membership voted by secret ballot in early 1981, the result was close—753 to 613 in favor of amending the bylaws to admit women into the Club. In September, five women were invited to become members; by the end of the year, there were a total of 16. All had transformed their own bold dreams into quests of discovery that certainly qualified them for membership.

As we celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the first class of women members in 2021, we caught up with four who are continuing to make extraordinary contributions to exploration. All have seen changes since those first days when they went to sea, into space, and to discovery points in between, and they all have strong ideas about what exploration means today.

When marine biologist, author, entrepreneur, and founder of Mission Blue Sylvia A. Earle participated in her first deepsea expedition in 1964, she spent six weeks

They scaled the highest mountains, sailed the roughest seas, and descended to the deepest point on planet Earth. They bushwhacked through the jungles of Africa, Asia, and Amazonia. They crossed deserts and rainforests, discovering rivers and species of wildlife and plants, previously unknown to the Western world. They planted flags at the North and South Poles, trekked across the shimmering ice fields of Antarctica, and walked on the Moon. Danger did not deter them. And the legendary Explorers Club, established in 1904, became a bastion for those fearless men, a place where they could share their tales of discovery and danger and plan their future adventures.

They were “Men of Action.”

When the idea of admitting women to the all-male organization began to gain traction after 75 years of the Club’s existence, members realized the change would mean venturing into a different kind of uncharted territory.

Of course, everyone knows that women have been explorers for centuries. The ancient Greek warrior Atalanta joined Jason and the Argonauts in their search for the Golden Fleece; French botanist Jeanne Baret became the first woman to circumnavigate the globe in 1775; and Native American Sacagawea guided the 40-man Lewis and Clark expedition from North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean in 1805, with a baby on her

OPENING SPREAD: “HER DEEPNESS” SYLVIA A. EARLE IN THE DEEPWORKER SUBMARINE. PHOTOGRAPH BY TIM TAYLOR. FACING PAGE: EARLE IN 1969, WHEN SHE WAS THE ONLY WOMAN TO JOIN THE U.S. NAVY-SPONSORED TEKTITE PROJECT. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY MISSION BLUE.

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“If something had happened to me, it could have killed the whole program.

They could sacrifice a guy, but they couldn’t sacrifice a mother.” is the deep blue sea.” As an entrepreneur, she established three companies that build deep-sea equipment and submersibles.

She is also a prolific author, most recently completing a new Atlas of the Oceans for National Geographic. When she founded Mission Blue in 2009, her long-held dream to create marine-protected areas around the world became a reality. Today there are 133 global “Hope Spots” and there will most certainly be more.

Like Earle, Kathryn D. Sullivan, who, until recently, served as the Club’s honorary chairman, also experienced some challenges during her early days in the mostly male-dominated fields of geology and oceanography. She explained that it was still rare for a woman to be onboard a ship in any full-fledged capacity, especially as a researcher.

“The two questions I encountered most often, posed with hesitancy or bewilderment, were ‘what will you do about bathrooms?’ and ‘what will my wife say?’ My answer was, ‘I know exactly how to use a bathroom or pee behind a tree, and your wife is your problem.’”

in the Indian Ocean, the only woman, accompanied by 70 male scientists and crew members. Five years later, she was again the only female chosen for the legendary Tektite project. Sponsored by the U.S. Navy, NASA, the Smithsonian Institution, and General Electric, it was designed to study the effects of living and working underwater for extended periods of time. Not everyone was pleased about her inclusion.

“Years after the project ended, George Bond, who was considered the ‘father of saturated diving’ told me he had objected,” Earle remembered. “He grudgingly admitted that I had done a good job. I asked him why he had opposed my participation. He told me it really wasn’t so much that I was a woman, but that I was a mother. He explained that saturation diving was still in its infancy then; if something had happened to me, it could have killed the whole program. They could sacrifice a guy, but they couldn’t sacrifice a mother.”

Over the years, Earle has seen our culture move toward more gender equality, and she found ways to embrace the joys of family without sacrificing her achievements on behalf of the oceans. As a diver, she set a depth record in 1979 that still stands today, earning her the nickname “Her Deepness.”

She was Time magazine’s first “Hero for the Planet” and is an “Explorer-in-Residence” at the National Geographic Society, although she is quick to explain that her “residency

KATHRYN D. SULLIVAN TRAVELED TO THE BOTTOM OF CHALLENGER DEEP IN THE MARIANA TRENCH WITH OCEANOGRAPHER VICTOR VESCOVO IN 2020, EARNING HER A GUINNESS WORLD RECORD FOR BEING THE ONLY HUMAN TO JOURNEY TO BOTH SPACE AND THE DEEPEST POINT ON EARTH.

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oceanographer and fellow member, Victor Vescovo. The journey earned her a Guinness World Record as the first human to travel to space and to the deepest point on Earth.

Like Sullivan, noted archaeologist Anna C. Roosevelt was also around nine years old when she discovered her own bold dream. During a trip with her mother to Mesa Verde (established as a national park by her great-grandfather President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906), she was captivated by the drama of the ancient cliff dwellings of prehistoric Ancestral Puebloans, shining golden in the Colorado sunshine. Their untold stories captured her curiosity, and she told her mother she wanted to be an archaeologist. For her birthday she received a pair of field boots from her uncle.

Many pairs of boots later, she excavated prehistoric sites in Amazonia in the 1980s and 1990s, unearthing evidence in a Paleo-Indian cave in Brazil that established a much longer cultural sequencing than archaeologists previously thought. Her proof was nearly lost when the primitive boat carrying her team, their artifacts, and a load of cattle nearly sank in a storm on the way downriver to Belém. Fortunately, the captain found some high ground with vegetation on it. They reached Belém safely, and, after careful carbon dating, Roosevelt’s collection of artifacts revealed that Amazonia’s prehistory went back more than 13,000 years. She published her findings in 1996, and eventually the archaeology community was convinced. No one doubts her cultural sequencing today.

Roosevelt knows all too well that “usually there is quite a lot of resistance to changing the main idea of a field. People don’t always want to hear the truth, but you have to weather their disapproval because it’s always best to tell the truth. You have to let things go off your back like water off a duck.”

That impervious optimism and commitment to the truth, along with her belief in the

In 1978, with her doctorate in hand, Sullivan was hired by NASA to be one of this country’s first six women astronauts and became the first American woman to walk in space in 1984. Her work on the Hubble Space Telescope remains the achievement she is most proud of from those early years.

She was part of the technical crew that designed and built that complex creation of aluminum, magnesium fluoride, and honeycombed mirrors that has brought space into our everyday lives. She helped deploy it in 1990; it has remained in orbit for more than 30 years—far longer than predicted.

Its otherworldly images continue to enthrall us, capturing the colors and vastness of the universe—a vastness that Sullivan calls “a reminder that Earth is just a little blue orb a couple of million miles from the Sun.” When she was just nine years old, Sullivan saw a glimpse of the faraway places she eventually would experience firsthand.

“I watched television stories about people who were breaking open the space frontier—Yuri Gagarin, Alan Shepard, and John Glenn—and people like Jacques Cousteau who was breaking open the ocean frontier with projects that were just as daring as a Moon shot. It was so entrancing and dramatic to me. Luckily, I saw it as ‘some people have this life.’ Not as ‘look what men do, and I’m a girl, so it means I can’t.’ Kudos to my parents; that line of thinking never crossed my mind.”

Those early images of astronauts and argonauts, and her parents’ encouragement, led Sullivan to explore both realms— space and sea. In 2020, she descended to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest place in the Pacific Ocean, with

PREVIOUS SPREAD: IN 1984, KATHRYN D. SULLIVAN BECAME THE FIRST AMERICAN WOMAN TO WALK IN SPACE. FACING PAGE: ANNA C. ROOSEVELT EXAMINES THE NOW-FAMOUS PALEO-INDIAN CAVE PAINTINGS THAT SHE DISCOVERED NEAR MONTE ALEGRE, BRAZIL, IN THE 1990S.

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books out, and I was always drawn to peoples in remote corners of the world—to their magnificent costumes, their ceremonies, their daily life. And I knew I wanted to go meet those people one day.”

She did. On an early trip to Kenya, Beckwith met Australian photographer Angela Fisher. This encounter would result in a 40-year collaboration to document stories and capture images of fast-disappearing cultures that reflect both our world’s incredible diversity as well as its commonalities. Crisscrossing the continent by mule train, camelback, dugout canoe, and on foot, they have visited 46 African countries and recorded more than 200 different cultural groups. Their vast body of work has appeared in dozens of books and award-winning films, traveling exhibits, and an archive of images and stories like none other in the world. This coming August, these rich assets will be available to their subjects via an online museum. When launched, it will be accessible to students at 40 African universities, and eventually to universities worldwide.

Unlike Earle, Roosevelt, and Sullivan, Beckwith did not encounter negative gender bias when she began to explore Africa in the 1970s. Quite the opposite, in fact.

“We found we were blessed to be women because women were really accepted and protected. We came respectfully; we came without our Western baggage; we came without superiority; we were humble; and we came there to understand.” She was welcomed by each village chief, quickly learned as many words as she could in each language, sat with the women of the village, and was delighted when they redressed her, pressed her hair, and drew scarification on

importance of building a cohort, are guide stars in Roosevelt’s life. Those principles have been at the heart of her decisions and discoveries throughout her 40-year career, which includes curator positions at the National Museum of the American Indian, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Field Museum; the honorary chair of The Explorers Club; her current professorship of anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago; and her active research as an archaeologist.

In recent years, Roosevelt has worked in Africa’s Congo Basin, and her findings may again disrupt some long-held theories.

“My first excavations looking at the ecology there suggest that humans emerged from an ape ancestor in the rainforest, not in the savanna. I’m rethinking the whole environment of human evolution, convinced the way it has been reconstructed in the past is not correct.”

With a new grant from her university, she plans to excavate abandoned diamond mines in Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic.

Often located in conflict zones, the sites present some dangers. But because miners already have pumped out water and left deep beds, the sites offer unique opportunities for discovering the new truths that Roosevelt hopes are waiting. Through her earlier habitat reconstruction, she already has found some promising clues about the role of prehistoric women in the cradle of humanity.

Africa also is the research focus of photojournalist and filmmaker Carol Beckwith, who is specifically drawn to the continent’s extraordinary cultural diversity and ceremonial history. Like the other “first women” of The Explorers Club, she was encouraged as a child to be curious and unafraid of challenges. When she was able to read, her father bought her a complete Encyclopaedia Britannica, placing its many volumes on the bookshelf at her eye level. “I would pull the

ANNA C. ROOSEVELT SURVEYS UNDERWATER SITES AT CURUPITÉ IN BRAZIL, WHERE SHE DISCOVERED EVIDENCE OF EARLY HUNTER-GATHERERS IN THE RAINFOREST.

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THE E XPLORERS JOURNAL

“When I became a member of The Explorers Club, I felt like I was part of a family of kindred spirits who shared my values, my determination, my passion.”

I felt like I was part of a family of kindred spirits who shared my values, my determination, my passion. In my case, we had to redefine the word explorer. I am not an explorer in the sense of climbing mountains or discovering the Blue Nile. But I believe part of exploration involves conserving and preserving that which has already been found.”

Earle agrees. Her global Hope Spots are proof of the importance of protection and preservation. Roosevelt thwarts extinction as well, digging deeply into prehistory, offering new clues about human evolution. While Sullivan’s journeys to space and the ocean floor have blazed new trails, she is quick to say that they also revealed the “fingerprints” of the past, left on the planet by humans over the years—not all of them beneficial. There are assuredly lessons to be learned from the past, and that knowledge gives us the capacity to look forward, to imagine new horizons. That’s what explorers do.

These four intrepid women helped usher in a radical new era for The Explorers Club.

There are now more than 800 female members of the organization, and, in the past few years, nearly half of newly elected members have been female. The controversies of 40 years ago have disappeared, replaced by deep friendships and unified, burgeoning support for young explorers whose curiosity and passion ensure the future of the Club and, indeed, the world.

her face. “They began sharing their stories and their innermost thoughts and feelings and inviting us to ceremonies that had never before been recorded. They trusted us to show the beauty and power and deep intelligence of their societies.”

Beckwith’s journeys were not without danger. In southwest Ethiopia, she narrowly escaped an ambush by warriors in remote Surmaland, and she nearly lost her life when wildebeests on a tiny landing strip in Maasailand caused a Kenyan friend’s small airplane to crash north of Mount Kilimanjaro.

She broke bones and ribs and lost sight in her right eye—her camera eye. After a month in the hospital in Kenya, she returned to England, where a doctor she describes as “visionary” created an almost-bionic eye for her. Harnessing a remarkable perseverance, she retrained herself to photograph and recompose images with her left eye and returned to Africa to document the last warrior-age rite of passage in the Chalbi Desert.

She knows from experience that perseverance is essential to exploration, and that a driving passion is what fuels it. “When I became a member of The Explorers Club,

PREVIOUS SPREAD: A SALAI MAASAI WARRIOR CEREMONY IN TANZANIA AS CAPTURED BY THE ARTFUL EYE OF CAROL BECKWITH. FACING PAGE: BECKWITH AND A WODAABE FRIEND IN NIGER.

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HARVESTING THE WILD

ficelled ruffed grouse with streamside edibles

by LES STROUD and CHEF PAUL ROGALSKI

THE E XPLORERS JOURNAL

WHILE SHOOTING AN EPISODE ON THE BANKS OF THE ATHABASCA RIVER, WE HAD AMPLE OPPORTUNITY TO FIND A VARIETY OF WILD EDIBLES EVEN THOUGH IT WAS THE OFF SEASON—A BENEFIT OF FORAGING BY A WATERWAY. THE ADDED BONUS WAS BAGGING A RUFFED GROUSE—WHICH PRESENTED A DELIGHTFUL SURPRISE AND CULINARY CHALLENGE FOR PAUL. FOR THIS DISH, YOU WILL NEED A STURDY GRILL THAT IS STRONG ENOUGH TO HANDLE WEIGHT AND A STABLE, FIREPROOF TRIPOD.

side down, about 30 cm above the coals in an area that provides even, consistent heat.

Lay the fresh willow branches over the coals to create flavorful smoke. Gently swing and spin the bird while cooking and move the tripod to cooler or hotter locations as required, ensuring you maximize heat use and smoke exposure. Once the breast meat starts to feel firm to the touch, carefully remove from the tripod and rehang from its neck so the legs continue cooking to your desired doneness.

Remove from heat and allow the birds to rest, keeping them warm for final dish assembly.

For the Labrador tea, toast the sprigs over the coals until the leaves are dehydrated and charred. Allow them to cool and crumble the leaves into a coarse powder. Discard woody stems and set the powder aside.

For the sauce: In a small pot, melt the butter, add the chopped shallot, and sauté until lightly browned. Stir in the red wine and bring to a boil. Add the green peppercorns, poultry stock, and the spruce bough. Simmer until reduced by half, add cream, and reduce further until thickened. Keep warm and adjust with salt as needed.

For the zucchini: Cut the zucchini in half lengthwise. Cook directly on the grill over the coals until slightly charred but still firm to the touch. While the squash is cooking, place a small, heatproof bowl on the grill, in a low-heat location. Add butter and melt.

Remove cooked zucchini from heat, cut into small pieces, and add to the melted butter.

Toss with a couple of pinches of Labrador tea powder and season with salt to taste.

To serve: Portion one leg and one breast per person. Serve with the vegetables and sauce. Garnish with yarrow and red clover blossoms.

FICELLED RUFFED GROUSE 2 1 2 2 2 5

ruffed grouse, cleaned pinch of salt small spruce bough tips tbs Labrador tea leaves meters paracord green willow branches

S P R U C E -I N F U S E D G R E E N P E P P E R C O R N S A U C E 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1

tbs butter large shallot, chopped cup red wine tbs green peppercorns in brine cup poultry stock small spruce bough cup heavy cream pinch of salt

CHARRED L ABR ADOR TE A-GRILLED ZUCCHINI 1 3 2 1 1 2 ¼ ¼

medium zucchini small yellow zucchini tbs butter tsp charred Labrador tea ash sprinkle of salt Labrador tea sprigs, leaves attached cup yarrow leaves cup red clover blossoms

Build a large, hot fire, burn down to coals, and set up the tripod and grill.

For each grouse: Sprinkle the cavity with salt and fill with the spruce bough tips and Labrador tea leaves. Truss the legs with paracord, then hang from the tripod, breast

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EXTREME MEDICINE YOUR HEALTH AND SAFETY IN THE FIELD

back into the field navigating the new normal when our wanderings resume

by MICHAEL J. MANYAK, MD, FACS

As explorers, we are all anxious to resume travel and with a renewed healthy caution for disease outbreaks. That requires all of us to be more vigilant about becoming exposed to pathogens, as well as becoming vectors of disease ourselves.

This heightened awareness of disease spread underscores the need to be prepared for travel and to be mindful about what hitchhikers you are bringing with you.

Gains made in decreased travel time in recent years may be offset by the time spent in transit due to differing regulations in countries and possibly even between regions or states within a nation’s borders.

Quarantine may be necessary when arriving at a destination even if we have seen

When my coauthors—former Surgeon General of the U.S. Coast Guard and Explorers Club fellow Joyce Johnson, and international security expert Warren J. Young—and I penned our award-winning travel safety book Lizard Bites & Street Riots back in 2014, we were all too aware of the potential impact of emerging viral diseases such as covid-19. Needless to say, since the book’s release, we have learned a great deal more about how to treat and prevent the disruption we have all experienced this past year. Given what we now know, we have been asked to update our handy volume, which will be out later this spring.

In it will be a host of new data, including informed advice on surviving pandemics.

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characteristics. Several important hoofed animals also have medium binding capacity. More research is needed to determine if the animals actually acquire or carry the disease.

One thing is certain: we are not done with pandemics.

Influenza A viral infections create the most worry for infectious disease experts.

Whether swine flu (H1N1) or bird flu (H5N1), these infections are passed by animals to man and can lead to fatalities.

The real danger lies in the ability of these viruses to remain at relatively low levels in the population until acquiring a mutation that allows human-to-human spread. The deadly 1918 Spanish flu pandemic caused

by H1N1 influenza A particularly affected young healthy people with good immune response and killed between 50 and 100 million people. Experts in the realm of epidemiology lose sleep over the possibility that bird or swine flu could again acquire such a capability.

In addition to several candidates to break out from the viral community, newly resurgent or more virulent versions of existing organisms pose a threat to spread. Malaria still kills millions each year and is amazingly resilient to treatment. Incidence of extremely drug resistant (XDR) TB continues to rise. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is an ongoing problem.

Antibiotic resistance is a major issue. New pathogens and vectors lurk.

We have all seen the virulence of coronavirus and its emerging variants, which may challenge vaccine strategies. And while one rarely hears about other possible modes of transmission such as via water supply, such vectors for disease are quietly being evaluated.

It is clear that we will remain locked in an arms race against some of the tiniest, yet most deadly, organisms on our living, breathing planet for years to come.

that it ultimately does not slow disease spread for a particular pathogen. We will all have to adjust travel schemes dependent on such variables.

Before venturing into the field, we must remain vigilant about vaccine-preventable diseases. While we have seen a decrease in hospitalizations and death rates from seasonal flu, it is highly likely to rebound to pre-covid levels once the public lets down its defenses of frequent handwashing, socially distancing, and remaining home if symptoms develop.

Seasonal flu constantly mutates like covid thereby requiring an annual vaccine that is variably effective. In addition to the flu vaccine, it is very important to keep up to date with other vaccines or get those which you have avoided. These include vaccines for diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus (collectively DTaP); measles, mumps, rubella (collectively MMR); shingles, polio, and hepatitis A and B. If you are traveling to an area that has yellow fever, you will need that vaccine. Rabies vaccine is highly recommended if you will be in rural areas where you may have contact with animals.

Meningococcal vaccine is recommended in areas where this disease has a presence.

Adjustments in travel will have to include potential effects on local populations of Indigenous peoples as well as wildlife, including exotic endangered species. We are just learning about the extent to which covid may be able to infect vertebrates.

Recently published research evaluated 410 species of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians and rated them according to the ability of coronavirus to attach to 25 different binding sites. Very high binding affinity was seen in all monkeys and great apes tested. Also with high binding capacity are whales, dolphins, rodents, deer, lemurs, and anteaters. Feline carnivores had medium binding affinity while other carnivores have low binding 81

THE E XPLORERS JOURNAL

BOOK REVIEWS EDITED BY MILBRY C. POLK

BLOOD MOON

BY DERECK AND BEVERLY JOUBERT

208 PP • NEW YORK: RIZZOLI, 2020 • ISBN-10: 0847868826 • ISBN-13: 978-0847868827 • $75

In their latest book, Blood Moon, renowned conservationists, filmmakers, and photographers Dereck and Beverly Joubert document their valiant effort to relocate 100 rhinos from South Africa to a safer location in Botswana through “Rhinos Without Borders,” a wildlife initiative they launched.

“Collective shame” is the reason the couple gives for starting their program,

which has mobilized an international team of vets, businesses, political leaders, local volunteers, truck drivers, helicopter pilots, military and police personnel, anti-poaching units, and others.

Through his eloquent prose, Dereck Joubert takes the reader through the history of rhinos and their place in the ecosystem, calling them “one of

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the most peaceful creatures on the planet, reminiscent of browsing dinosaurs.”

Unfortunately, the rhino’s docile nature makes it easy prey for poachers after its valuable horn. He writes that rhino horn is, by weight, more valuable than gold or cocaine, which is why an animal is lost to poaching every 6.3 hours.

Erroneously thought to possess a host of curative properties in Chinese traditional medicine, including “enhancing a man’s performance,” rhino horn—like pangolin scales, another poaching favorite—is little more than a mass of keratin, the very same material that forms our own human toenails, fingernails, and hair, according to the wildlife management experts.

Beverly Joubert’s striking black-and-white images document the complicated and highly coordinated project to capture, move, airlift, and habituate the rhinos in a new setting. This story is a testament to what individuals with a dream can accomplish. Their book is a clarion call to action.

BOOK RE VIE WS

THE NEXT EVEREST

BY JIM DAVIDSON

416 PP • NEW YORK: ST. MARTIN’S PRESS, 2021 • ISBN-13: 978-1250272300 • $29.99 • REVIEWED BY JEFF BLUMENFELD

On April 25, 2015, geologist and climber Jim Davidson and his team were ascending Mt. Everest when a 7.8-magnitude earthquake released avalanches all around them, destroying their only escape route and trapping them at nearly 6,100 meters. The quake was the largest in Nepal in 81 years and it killed nearly 8,900 people. That day also became the deadliest in the history of Everest, with 19 people losing their lives on the mountain.

The Next Everest: Surviving the Mountain’s Deadliest Day and Finding the Resilience to Climb Again shares a harrowing tale about those deadly earthquakes and avalanches

and his return to the mountain to reach its summit.

In his book, Davidson explains why explorers seek high and remote places: “In Himalayan teahouses and noisy mountain taverns, I’ve had deep conversations with fellow climbers about what drives us. We often speak reverently about peacefulness, spirituality, and connection with the Earth. Long alpine days bring satisfying exhaustion to my body and quietness to my mind.

Mountaineering is a form of moving meditation.”

Elsewhere he writes, “Climbing not only allows me to nurture those meaningful aspects of life, but it also lets me experience personal growth while traveling through some of the most magnificent wild places on the planet. The high mountains exemplify immensity, intensity, and inspiration. In essence, I climb to seek awe.”

His story is not about “conquering” the world’s highest peak. Rather, it is a meditation on how, by embracing change, challenge, and uncertainty, anyone can prepare to face their own “next Everest” in life. Davidson, who has been commended by the U.S. National Park Service for volunteering on risky and remote mountain rescues, regularly inspires audiences through his motivational speaking business, Speaking of Adventure.

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EXPEDITION DEEP OCEAN

BY JOSH YOUNG

384 PP • NEW YORK: PEGASUS BOOKS, 2020 • ISBN-10: 1643136763 • ISBN-13: 978-1643136769 • $27.95

In Expedition Deep Ocean, Josh Young chronicles the fascinating story of recent dives to the deepest places in all of the world’s oceans— challenging expeditions, conceived and led by Explorers Club fellow Victor Vescovo, a businessman with a scientific and naval background.

Critical to the mission was to design and build a submersible capable of withstanding an external pressure of 8 kilograms per square centimeter, for the tiniest leak would spell a swift and dramatic end. Young describes how Vescovo and a team of engineers and scientists at Florida-based Triton Submarines took on the technical challenges that led to a revolutionary sub design. The

BOOK RE VIE WS

resulting craft, DSV Limiting Factor, supported by its mothership, the research vessel DSSV Pressure Drop, was launched in 2018. And thus began the Five Deeps Expedition. Its mission: to reach the deepest point in each of the five oceans to map and survey life there.

In the Atlantic, Vescovo traveled down 8,376 meters to the bottom of the Puerto Rico Trench. The next stop was in the Southern Ocean, where he mapped the South Sandwich Trench. In the Indian Ocean, he found new species in the Sunda Trench.

In the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench, he reached the bottom of Challenger Deep, the deepest known point on Earth. He also visited the Pacific Ocean’s Tonga Trench, which he discovered was the second deepest known point in the oceans. His final expedition was in the Arctic Ocean where he reached the bottom of the Molloy Deep.

Chapters in the book describe the challenges and excitement of each of the major dives and what was discovered. Explaining why he embarked on one of the most ambitious and dangerous modern exploration endeavors where new technology had to be developed to achieve the goals, Vescovo says “the deep ocean has been this huge, impenetrable mystery with heaven

knows what treasures. What we have tried to do is build a vehicle that opens it wide so we can find out what is on the other side.”

Prior to the Five Deeps Expedition, only three people had reached Challenger Deep. With the launch of DSV Limiting Factor, Vescovo has made it possible to undertake multiple dives into the hadal zone in what is proving to be a formidable research platform.

C A P TA IN COOK RE DISCOV ERE D

BY DAVID L. NICANDRI

448 PP • VANCOUVER: UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA PRESS, 2020 • ISBN-10: 077486222X • ISBN-13: 978-0774862226 • $45

Explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the British Royal Navy, James Cook (1728–1799) is best remembered for his three major pioneering roundthe-world expeditions in the ships Endeavour and

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Resolution, during which he sailed across thousands of nautical miles of largely uncharted seas. He circumnavigated and mapped lands across the Pacific Ocean, from New Zealand to Hawaii, in meticulous detail and on a scale not previously charted

by Western navigators. It was in Hawaii, while on his third Pacific voyage, that he was killed in 1799, during a skirmish with the locals.

While Cook’s Pacific exploits are well known, few are familiar with his polar voyages. David Nicandri, a former executive director of the Washington State Historical Society, aims to right that in his latest book, Captain Cook Rediscovered: Voyaging to the Icy Latitudes. Nicandri discusses Cook’s fascination with ice and how he pioneered the scientific study of icebergs and pack ice formation. Nicandri argues that most biographers of Cook dwell on his “palm-tree” exploits, paying less attention to his explorations of northern and southern environs.

Indeed, the maps supplied in the book show just how extensively Cook traveled in these areas before being turned back by ice.

On his second voyage, Cook came closest of any expedition to date to Antarctica. He wrote of this furthest point and the sighting of icebergs: “I, whose

THE E XPLORERS JOURNAL

ambition leads me not only farther than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible to go.” One of the goals of his final voyage was the search for the elusive Northwest Passage. Cook was stymied by walls of ice off the Alaskan coast that prevented him from further northern exploration. The Passage would not be navigated on land and sea until 1850 by the Irish explorer Robert McClure and would not be sailed straight through until the 1903–1906 expedition by Norwegian Roald Amundsen. Refuting earlier historians of Cook, Nicandri says that Cook’s third voyage “was not a continuation of his earlier expeditions in the South Pacific, nor a fatal mistake, but a crowning navigational achievement.”

Nicandri does an exemplary job of reviewing knowledge that was available in Cook’s time regarding the far north. He discusses details of his voyages and examines various source materials, including journals by those who accompanied him. He also muses on the extraordinary impact of his discoveries on his contemporaries.

Cook, he writes, “provided Europe with its first glimmer of understanding about some parts of the world.”

This book is an important addition to polar history and the histories of exploration.

BET WEEN L AND AND SEA: THE GREAT MARSH

BY DOROTHY KERPER MONNELLY

120 PP • SEATTLE: LUCIA MARQUAND, 2020 • ISBN-10: 1646570111 • ISBN-13: 978-1646570119 • $50

Dorothy Kerper Monnelly is a fine example for our restricted times of how one can discover another world just outside one’s back door.

For more than 40 years, Monnelly has lived next to and photographed the vast tidal wetlands known as the Great Marsh in Ipswich, Massachusetts—one of the few unspoiled wilderness areas of the American Northeast. As Jeanne Falk Adams writes in her preface to Between Land and Sea: The Great Marsh, Monnelly’s “art is more than beautiful blackand-white photographs… it moves me to care, to learn more about the area, and appreciate my own environment with greater connection.” In her poignant introduction to the volume, Terry Tempest

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Williams goes further, calling Monnelly’s photographs “a window into the beauty and all that is subtle and searing before us.” Doug Stewart in his essay explains that a salt marsh is unique, “it is not sea and not quite land, it is something in between.”

The privately protected salt marsh is one of the last remaining salt marshes along the East Coast—its islands, mudflats, beaches, dunes, and marshlands are a sanctuary for more than 300 species of birds and animals.

It is also an important nursery for fish and other marine animals. Unfortunately, this vital ecosystem is now under threat from rising sea levels and human activity and its byproducts, among them pollutants from fertilizers, septic and industrial wastes, and oil runoff from roads.

Monnelly’s haunting blackand-white images show the landscape enveloped in fog, marsh grass waving with giant dew-covered spiderwebs, wind-carved dunes, and islands appearing out of the tidal reaches. Naturalist E.O. Wilson has called Monnelly—whose prints are in the collections of the Peabody Essex Museum and other institutions—“the Ansel Adams of the wetlands.” And she is. Monnelly’s evocative images remind us all why we should care about the protection of this unique ecosystem.

THE E XPLORERS JOURNAL

chapter chairs T HE E XPL ORERS CLUB 46 EAST 70TH STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10021 WWW.EXPLORERS.ORG | 212-628-8383

AFRICA Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka gladys@ctph.org

FLORIDA Joseph Dituri, PhD joe@gallantaquatic.com

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA Lesley Ewing lesleycoastal@gmail.com

SOUTHERN FLORIDA Bruce C. Matheson bcm09@bellsouth.net

AL ASK A Mead Treadwell meadwell@alaska.net

GEORGE ROGERS CL ARK Cindy Irvin cirvin100@yahoo.com

NORWAY Synnøve Marie Kvam Strømsvåg explorers.norge@gmail.com

SOUTHWEST Robert Louis DeMayo rdemayo07@aol.com

ATL ANTA Steve Pigott jagter@msn.com

GREAT BRITAIN & IREL AND Mark Wood, Chair mark@markwoodexplorer.com Rory Golden, Vice Chair rgolden@eircom.net

PACIFIC NORTHWEST John All, PhD john.all@wwu.edu

ST. LOUIS Cynthia Peters cynthiaspeters@gmail.com

PHIL ADELPHIA A.J. “Buddy” Obara, Jr. ajo_@msn.com

SWEDEN Lars E. Larsson llarsson@explorersclub.se

POL AND Mariusz Ziółkowski mziolkowski@uw.edu.pl www.explorersclubpoland.pl

SWITZERL AND Laurent Develle ldevelle37@gmail.com switzerland@explorers.org

HONG KONG Angélica Anglés aangles@explorershk.org

ROCK Y MOUNTAIN Jeff Blumenfeld jeff@blumenfeldpr.com www.explorers-rm.org

TEX AS Nancy McGee nancy@islandtimescuba.com

NEW ENGL AND Gregory Deyermenjian paititi@alumni.clarku.edu

SAN DIEGO Charlene Glacy cglacy@yahoo.com

NORTH PACIFIC AL ASK A Joshua C. Lewis & Victoria M. Becwar-Lewis npac1@me.com

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA Charles Carmona explorersclubsocal@gmail.com David Dolan DavidDolan@aol.com

AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEAL AND Todd Tai todd@mivision.com.au BHUTAN Matthew DeSantis matt@mybhutan.com CANADA George Kourounis chapterchair@explorersclub.ca CENTRAL & SOUTH AMERICA Acting Chair: Synnøve Marie Kvam Strømsvåg sstromsvag@explorers.org CHICAGO/GREAT L AKES Robert A. Shuchman, PhD shuchman@mtu.edu EAST & SOUTH ASIA Steven R. Schwankert steven@sinoscuba.com

GREATER PIEDMONT James Borton asiareview@yahoo.com HAWAII Mark Blackburn mblackburn@aol.com

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WASHINGTON, DC Bruce Molnia glaciers@verizon.net www.explorersclubdc.org WESTERN EUROPE Ief Winckelmans westerneurope@explorers.org

THE E XPLORERS JOURNAL

legacy society “A HEALTHY ENDOWMENT IS THE SIGN OF A STRONG AND SUSTAINABLE NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION. PARTICIPATION IN THE EXPLORERS CLUB’S LEGACY PROGRAM IS A MEANS BY WHICH WE ALL CAN ENSURE THAT OUR CLUB IS HEALTHY AND SUSTAINABLE FOR ALL FUTURE EXPLORERS!” —NANCY L. NENOW, MN’04

Mark R. Allio • John G. Alexander • Alan B. Albright • Robert J. Atwater • Capt. Norman L. Baker* • Barbara Ballard • Robert D. Ballard, PhD • Samuel B. Ballen* • Mark Gregory Bayuk • Daniel A. Bennett • Josh Bernstein • Bruce Blanchard • John R. Bockstoce, DPhil • Jack Aaron Boggs* • Bjorn G. Bolstad* • Capt. Bruce M. Bongar, PhD • Brian M. Boom, PhD • Jill Botway • Garrett R. Bowden • Capt. Lawson W. Brigham, PhD, USCG (ret.) • Harry Davis Brooks • Lt. Col. Jewell Richard Browder* • August “Augie” Brown* • John C.D. Bruno • Marc Bryan-Brown • Lee R. Bynum* • Virginia Castagnola Hunter • Julianne M. Chase, PhD • James M. Chester* • James Thomas Chirurg • Maj. Gen. Arthur W. Clark, USAF (ret.) • Capt. William Clark* • Steven Cohen, PhD (hon.) • Leslie E. Colby* • Jonathan M. Conrad • Catherine Nixon Cooke • Sandra B. Cook, PhD • S. Allen Counter, PhD, D.M.Sc.* • John Craparo • Lynn D. Danaher • Constance Difede • David A. Dolan, MA, MPH, M.Div. • Mr. & Mrs. James Donovan • Col. William H. Dribben, USA (ret.)* • Amelia Earhart* • Sylvia A. Earle, PhD • Edwin L. Ecclestone, Jr. • James M. Edwards, MD • Lee M. Elman • Alan Feldstein • Michael L. Finn • Robert L. Fisher, PhD • John W. Flint* • Capt. Joel Fogel • Kay Foster • James M. Fowler* • W. Roger Fry* • Max Gallimore • Richard Garriott de Cayeux • Char Glacy • Alfred C. Glassell, Jr.* • George W. Gowen* • Randall A. Greene • Susan Ross Grimaldi • Jean Charles Michel Guite • Les Guthman • Capt. Robert “Rio” Hahn • Penrose Hallowell • Allan C. Hamilton • Scott W. Hamilton • O. Winston “Bud” Hampton, PhD* • Brian P. Hanson • James H. Hardy, MD • Ira Haupt, II • Judith Heath* • Robert A. Hemm • Gary “Doc” Hermalyn, PhD • Sir Edmund P. Hillary, KG, ONZ, KBE* • John A. Hodge • Carlota “Lotsie” Clark Hermann Holton • Christy Holton Hubbard • L. Ron Hubbard* • Charles B. Huestis* • Robert Edgar Hyman • J.P. Morgan Charitable Trust • Robert M. Jackson, MD • Theodore P. Janulis • Linn E. Johnson • Kenneth Kambis, PhD • Kenneth M. Kamler, MD • Prince Joli Kansil • Lorie M.L. Karnath, MBA, PhD (hon.) • Anthony G. Kehle, III • Anne B. Keiser • Kathryn Kiplinger • Martin Klein • Thomas R. Kuhns, MD • Carl C. Landegger • Leon “Lee” V. Langan • John R. Lawrence • Robert M. Lee* • Michael S. Levin • Florence Lewisohn Trust • J. Roland Lieber • James E. Lockwood, Jr.* • Jose Loeb • John H. Loret, PhD, DSc* • Margaret D. Lowman, PhD • Michael Luzich • Daniel J. Lyons • Robert H. Malott* • Leslie Mandel* • Robert E. Maroney • Michele Mass, MD • Robert E. McCarthy* • George E. McCown • Lorus T. Milne, PhD* • James M. Mitchelhill* • Arnold H. Neis • Nancy Nenow • Virginia E. Newell • Walter P. Noonan • Alan H. Nichols • Martin T. Nweeia, D.D.S. • Dr. John W. Olsen • Kathleen Parker • Alese* & Morton Pechter* • Cynthia S. Peters • William E. Phillips* • Ashley Pilipiszyn • David S. Press • Prof. Mabel L. Purkerson, MD • Roland R. Puton • Timothy A. Radke, MD • Dimitri Rebikoff* • Mabel Dorn Reeder* • John T. Reilly, PhD • Adrian Richards, PhD • Bruce E. Rippeteau, PhD • Merle Greene Robertson, PhD* • Otto E. Roethenmund • James Beeland Rogers, Jr. • Faanya L. Rose • William J. Roseman • Rudy L. Ruggles, Jr. • Gene Rurka • Wayne J. Safro • David J. Saul, PhD* • Willets H. Sawyer, III • A. Harvey Schreter* • Donald L. Segur* • Margaret Segur* • Walter Shropshire, Jr., PhD, MDiv. • Richard T. Silver, MD • Robert H.I. Silver* • Theodore M. Siouris • William J. L. Sladen, MD, DPhil* • Susan Deborah Smilow • Capt. David D. Smith, PhD, USNR (ret.) • Mark A. Smith* • Ernest R. Sohns* • Sally A. Spencer* • Ronnie & Allan Streichler • Arthur O. Sulzberger* • Vernon F. Taylor, III • Mitchell Terk, MD • Lowell Thomas, Jr.* • C. Frederick (Rick) Thompson • James “Buddy” Thompson* • Edward B. Tucker, MBE* • Wendy Tucker • Edmund S. Twining, III • Marc Verstraete Van de Weyer • William F. Vartorella, PhD, C.B.C. • Robert C. Vaughn • Ann Marks Volkwein • Alexander Wallace • Julia M. Wallace • Don Walsh, PhD • Johnny Waters • Leonard A. Weakley, Jr. • William G. Wellington, PhD* • James S. Westerman • Robert H. Whitby • Julius Wile* • Holly Williams • Francis A. Wodal* • Lindley Kirksey Young • Eric Zember • Santo (Sandy) Zicaro * Deceased

THE LEGACY SOCIE T Y COMMIT TEE

T HE E XPLORERS CLUB

David A. Dolan (Chair), Robert J. Atwater, Brian M. Boom, Alan Feldstein, Kay Foster, George W. Gowen, Penrose “Pen” Hallowell, Scott W. Hamilton, Brian P. Hanson, Virginia Newell, Walter P. Noonan, Mabel L. Purkerson, Timothy A. Radke, Faanya L. Rose, David D. Smith, and Eric Zember

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THE E XPLORERS JOURNAL

WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? GREAT MOMENTS IN EXPLORATION AS TOLD TO JIM CLASH

Nims Purja extreme ascents NIRMAL “NIMS” PURJA, 37, STUNNED THE MOUNTAINEERING WORLD IN 2019 WHEN HE SUMMITED ALL 14 OF THE WORLD’S 8,000-METER PEAKS IN JUST SIX MONTHS AND SIX DAYS. IT WAS A SPEED-CLIMBING FEAT ALMOST UNIMAGINABLE, AND ONE THAT MAY NEVER BE DUPLICATED. THEN, ON JANUARY 16 OF THIS YEAR, NIMS ONE-UPPED HIMSELF, LEADING THE FIRST SUCCESSFUL WINTER ASCENT OF K2 AND CLIMBING WITHOUT SUPPLEMENTAL OXYGEN. FIVE OTHER CLIMBERS PERISHED ON THE MOUNTAIN. WE RECENTLY CAUGHT UP WITH NIMS TO DISCUSS HIS K2 SUCCESS AND THE LIVES WE LOST.

JC: When you knew the K2 summit was within reach, what did you do?

NP: My mission was to make all ten team members stand on the summit at the same time. With a few steps to go, I told them to turn off their radios because this was our moment. We started hugging and, as we walked the final steps, we sang the [Nepalese] national anthem. I was super happy, but that happiness came not from my own success, but from the team’s success. As soon as we started taking pictures, though, I got super cold, having climbed without oxygen. I started down after 15 minutes. Normally, I would stay on top for an hour or two, thanking my sponsors, but it was just too cold.

JC: Of the two, K2 in winter or all 14 8,000-meter peaks in six months, which was more special?

NP: They both have their own dynamics. It’s tough just to climb one 8,000-meter peak, let alone 14 in such a short period of time.

K2 in winter is something people had thought about for a long time but had never accomplished. For me, I found more satisfaction in K2 because it was in a different manner and style, a message of team unification rather than just me climbing for myself.

JC: Five climbers died this winter season on K2. How do you react when people you know die on the mountain?

NP: When I first saw the news of missing climbers, I wanted to believe they would come back, but deep inside I knew they wouldn’t.

But this is as extreme as high-altitude mountaineering gets. I know they passed doing what they loved. It’s only a matter of time, to be honest, and one day could be my day. Who knows? Death is a sobering reminder.

A fellow of The Explorers Club since 1999, Jim Clash is the author of The Right Stuff: Interviews with Icons of the 1960s .

IMAGE PUBLISHED WITH THE PERMISSION OF NIRMAL PURJA.

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DILLON ELLIS DESCENDS INTO THE “INFERNO ROOM” DURING AN EXPEDITION THAT REVEALED A HOST OF NEW PASSAGEWAYS IN THE FAMED NATURAL BRIDGE CAVERNS SHOW CAVE IN TEXAS. PHOTOGRAPH BY BENNETT LEE.