the explorers journal - The Explorers Club

the
e x p lor e r s
j o u r n a l
EST. 1921
polar extremes
winter 2008-2009
Gl e n L is t on & Jan-Gunn a r W in t he r
frozen in time
J a me s Balog
extreme ice survey
R ichard Ellis
white bears, green grass
vol. 86 no.4 I $8.00 I www.explorers.org I

MADE IN CANADA

the explorers journal
winter 2008-2009
polar extremes
cover photo: A Ground blizzard on
the East Antarctic Ice Sheet makes
for a perilous overland traverse
toward the south pole. Photograph
by Jan-Gunnar Winther.
glaciologists take measurements of iceland’s Steinsholtsjökull, which has retreated 55 meters since 2005. Photograph by Ragnar Th. Sigurdsson
Antarctica
features
specials
regulars
Frozen in Time
by Glen Liston and Jan-Gunnar Winther, p. 14
A turbulent world below
by David K.A. Barnes, p. 18
into an uncharted realm
text and photographs by Daniel Jones, p. 23
igloo builder confessions
interview with Norbert E. Yankielun, p. 26
White bears, green Grass
by Richard Ellis, p. 30
Extreme ice
text and photographs by James Balog, p. 34
once upon a glacier
by Ari Trausti Gudmundsson, photographs by Ragnar Th. Sigurdsson, p. 46
an inner pilgrimage
Kristen Ulmer talks with Jim Clash, p. 50
president’s letter, p. 2
editor’s note, p. 4
exploration news, p. 8
expedition Medicine, p. 54
extreme cuisine, p. 56
reviews, p. 58
what were they thinking?, p. 64

the explorers journal
winter 2008-2009
president’s letter
Caring for a precious asset
Our Club’s history shows us that since its incorporation in 1905, The
Explorers Club has been committed to maintaining the Club’s purposes
as stated in its Certificate of Incorporation:
1) To further general exploration
2) To spread knowledge of the same
3) The acquisition and maintenance of a library of exploration and travel
4) To encourage explorers in their work by evincing interest and sympathy, and especially
by bringing them in personal contact and binding them in the bonds of good fellowship
How does your Club headquarters building help us achieve these goals?
Since the 1960s, our Club has been headquartered in the beautiful Lowell
Thomas Building at 46 East 70th Street in New York City. This building
has been the venue of nearly half of all of the weekly lectures our Club has
presented since its founding more than 100 years ago.
The building houses a collection of priceless artifacts and books that have
been collected over more than a century. It has been the meeting place for
the planning of countless famous and not so famous expeditions.
Most our members, regardless of where they live, believe that this building
has become an important symbol of The Explorers Club and should be
restored and maintained for future generations of explorers. And now the
time has come for us all to lend a hand in providing the funds for this major
project.
When you receive your 2009 dues statement you will find a space to add
an extra contribution to the new Capital Campaign Fund for our building.
Please join me in helping the Development Committee, chaired by Tony
Saxton, MN’04, to make this capital campaign another success for our
esteemed Club.
Daniel A. Bennett

SAVE THE DATE
SATURDAY, MARCH 21, 2009
THE 105 TH
EXPLORERS CLUB
ANNUAL DINNER
E C A D 2 0 0 9
THE BALANCING ACT:
Exploring
BIO
DIV
ERS
ITY
Tickets will go on sale January 26, 2009. www.explorers.org
(Tickets and seating requests are on a first come first served basis.)

the explorers journal
winter 2008-2009
editor’s note
exploring polar extremes
When the fourth International Polar Year was launched in
March 2007, numerous scientific expeditions took to the field
with the purpose of unlocking the mechanics of Earth’s polar
regions and increasing our understanding of how they fared
in times past and are likely to fare in the future in an age of
mutable climate. With this international campaign drawing to a
close in the months ahead, we thought it an ideal time to check
in on a number of projects, several of which headed out into
the field with an Explorers Club Flag in hand.
This issue we highlight a trio of initiatives currently underway
in Antarctica to document its climate history and the ocean
life beneath its ice shelves, which until recently had been beyond
the reach of human exploration. We also check in with
acclaimed National Geographic photographer James Balog,
who has been documenting the calving and degradation of
glaciers around the globe through time-lapse photography as
part of his Extreme Ice Survey. Complementing his work is a
report from a team of glaciologists in Iceland who have been
monitoring the island nation’s glaciers, the runoff from which
provides most of the country’s hydropower.
Before turning the pages of this edition of The Explorers
Journal, however, I might suggest you pour yourself a hot cup
of tea. At least for the moment, it’s still cold outside.
Icebergs that originated in the vast expanse of Iceland’s
Vatnajökull, the largest glacier in the country, decay
and melt at Jökulsárlón, a tidal lagoon. Photograph by
James Balog.
Angela M.H. Schuster, Editor-in-Chief

the explorers journal
winter 2008-2009
the explorers club
President
Daniel A. Bennett
Board Of Directors
Officers
PATRONS & SPONSORS
Honorary President
Don Walsh, Ph.D.
Honor a ry Direc tors
Robert D. Ballard, Ph.D.
George F. Bass, Ph.D
Eugenie Clark, Ph.D.
Sylvia A. Earle, Ph.D.
Col. John H. Glenn Jr., USMC (Ret.)
Gilbert M. Grosvenor
Donald C. Johanson, Ph.D.
Richard E. Leakey, D.Sc.
Roland R. Puton
Johan Reinhard, Ph.D.
George B. Schaller, Ph.D.
Don Walsh, Ph.D.
CLASS OF 2009
Daniel A. Bennett
Kenneth M. Kamler, M.D.
Lorie Karnath
Theodore M. Siouris
Alicia Stevens
CLASS OF 2010
Anne L. Doubilet
William Harte
Kathryn Kiplinger
Daniel A. Kobal, Ph.D.
R. Scott Winters, Ph.D.
CLASS OF 2011
Norman L. Baker
Jonathan M. Conrad
Constance Difede
Kristin Larson, Esq.
Margaret D. Lowman, Ph.D.
Vice President, Chapters
Robert H. Whitby
Vice President, Membership
Daniel A. Kobal, Ph.D.
Vice President, Operations
Garrett R. Bowden
Vice President, Research & Education
Margaret D. Lowman, Ph.D.
Treasurer
Mark Kassner
Assistant Treasurer
Kevin O’Brien
Secretary
Robert M.T. Jutson, Jr.
Assistant Secretary
Anne L. Doubilet
Patrons Of Exploration
Robert H. Rose
Mr. & Mrs. Donald Segur
Michael W. Thoresen
Corporate Partner Of Exploration
Rolex Watch U.S.A., Inc.
Corporate Supporter Of Exploration
National Geographic Society
the explorers journal
EDITORS
publisher
Daniel A. Bennett
Editor-in-Chief
Angela M.H. Schuster
Contributing Editors
Jeff Blumenfeld
Jim Clash
Michael J. Manyak, M.D., FACS
Milbry C. Polk
Carl G. Schuster
Nick Smith
Linda Frederick Yaffe
Copy Chief
Valerie Saint-Rossy
ART DEPARTMENT
Art Director
Jesse Alexander
Deus ex Machina
Steve Burnett
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exploration news
edited by Jeff Blumenfeld, expeditionnews.com
Ghost Peaks explored
probing Antarctica’s great mountain range
and magnetic fields.
Information on the deeper
structure of the Gamburtsevs
will come from a network of
seismometers that will listen
to earthquake signals passing
through the rock from
the other side of the globe.
Another important aim of the
project is to find a place to drill
for ancient ices. By examining
bubbles of air trapped in compacted
snow, it is possible for
researchers to glean details
about past environmental conditions.
For more information:
www.antarctica.ac.uk, http://
agap-north.blogspot.com.
Climbers wanted
No one has ever seen the
Gamburtsevs, which match
the Alps in scale, because
they are covered by up to four
kilometers of ice. Geologists
have wondered how such a
massif could have formed and
persisted in the middle of the
White Continent. Now, a team
of scientists, engineers, pilots,
and support staff from the UK,
the United States, Germany,
Australia, China, and Japan
is setting out on a deep-field
survey to get some answers.
“You can almost think
about it as exploring another
planet—but on Earth,” says
Fausto Ferraccioli of the
British Antarctic Survey.
“Most mountain ranges are on
the edges of continents, and
we really can’t understand
8
what these mountains are doing
in the center.” The AGAP
(Antarctica’s Gamburtsev
Province) project will establish
two camps from where
the team will map the subglacial
range using surface and
airborne instruments.
A Soviet team undertaking
a seismic survey discovered
Gamburtsevs in the late
1950s. The hidden rocky
prominence was totally unexpected;
scientists thought the
interior of the continent would
be relatively flat.
Two survey aircraft will
sweep back and forth across
the ice to map the shape of the
mountains. The planes will be
equipped with ice-penetrating
radar and instruments to measure
the local gravitational
Earth-Mars Cave Detection Project
seeks volunteers
Have experience in caving,
rock climbing, and/or mountaineering?
The Earth-Mars
Cave Detection Project wants
you. Candidates must be
physically fit, not claustrophobic,
own caving equipment
or be willing to purchase it,
and are available to commit
to at least one ten-day stint
(January 12–February 28).
Field objectives include placing
temperature/barometric
pressure sensors in caves and
on the surface, and mapping
caves using newly developed
cartographic techniques.
Work will be conducted near
Barstow, CA. For information:
Jut Wynne, jut.wynne@nau.
edu, 928 523 7757.

EXPLORATION NEWS
Jacques Piccard
a pioneer in deep-ocean exploration
One of the great explorers of the twentieth century,
Jacques Piccard, 86, died on November 1,
at his home on the shores of Lake Geneva. A true
“Captain Nemo,” Piccard was born in Brussels
on July 28, 1922. Growing up, he was quick to
follow in the footsteps of his father, noted physicist
Auguste Piccard, who had invented both the
stratospheric balloon and the bathyscaph. On
January 23, 1960, Piccard, along with Explorers
Club Honorary President,
Don Walsh, became the first
men to reach the deepest
place on Earth—Challenger
Deep, 10,916 meters down
in the Mariana Trench off
Guam—aboard the U.S.
Navy’s Bathyscaph Trieste.
After this exploit, Piccard
went on to build four mesoscaphs
(mid-depth submarines),
including the first
to carry 33,000 passengers
into the depths of Lake
Geneva during the Swiss
National Exhibition in 1964.
With total faith in technology,
he designed and directed
the construction of each submarine, and personally
tested them over the years. His last deep dive was
in a “pocket submarine” at the age of 82.
Ahead of his time in his concern for the environment,
Piccard had a lifelong passion for the study
and protection of the seas. During the Trieste dive,
he and Walsh discovered living organisms in the
Mariana Trench. In interviews, Piccard told the
press, “By far the most interesting find was the fish
that came floating by our porthole. We were astounded
to find higher marine life forms down there
at all.” It was a discovery that led to the prohibition
of nuclear waste dumping in ocean trenches. In
1969, Piccard spent a month drifting some 3,000
kilometers underwater, exploring the current of the
Gulf Stream.
If you can apply the term “Renaissance man” to
an explorer, then this surely described Jacques,”
Walsh told The Explorers Journal. “He was a man of
great intellectual breadth and depth and man who
contributed a great deal to undersea technology
and operations. His unique gift with words let him
skillfully describe his accomplishments and hopes
for the future of undersea exploration. Over the
years since Trieste, our paths crossed frequently. It
was just last November that
I visited his home to discuss
a proposed movie project.
Sadly, it would be the last
time I would see him.”
Piccard passed his passion
for scientific invention
and exploration on to his son
Bertrand, a psychiatrist and
aeronaut, who, with Briton
Brian Jones, was the first to
fly a balloon nonstop around
the world in March 1999.
During the flight, the duo
drew upon Jacques’ experiences
in the Gulf Stream to
work out how best to use the
jet stream to speed the balloon
around the world. They also tested two ideas
put forth by Auguste Piccard during his pioneering
flights: first, partly inflating the balloon at takeoff to
allow for the expansion of gases at higher altitudes,
second, making use of an airtight capsule.
“My father passed on to me a sense of curiosity,
a desire to mistrust dogma and common assumptions,
a belief in free will, and confidence in the face
of the unknown,” said Bertrand. “My sister Marie-
Laure, my brother Thierry, and myself all owe to him
a certain vision of life, in which respect for others is
the guiding principle, and dreams can be realized
through perseverance.”
In 2000, the Piccard family was awarded The
Explorers Medal in recognition of their collective
contributions to scientific exploration.
the explorers journal

EXPLORATION NEWS
F i r s t A s c e n t o n
China’s Siguniang
conquest of the southwest ridge
Chad Kellogg and climbing
partner Dylan Johnson have
completed the first ascent
of the southwest ridge of
6,250-meter Mt. Siguniang
in Sichuan, China, in late
September. The two men
spent ten days climbing the
72-pitch route and descending.
They suffered through
wet storms and a lack of
food, and each lost 20 to 30
pounds during their efforts.
The climb was bittersweet
for Kellogg, recipient of an
American Alpine Club 2008
Lyman Spitzer Cutting Edge
Award. He was attempting
the same route last year when
he learned that his wife Lara
had been killed in a climbing
accident on Mt. Wake in
Alaska. Kellogg and Johnson
report the tourism industry in
Sichuan is reeling from the
devastating earthquake in May
and the political crisis in Tibet.
Yet traveling there is safe and
enjoyable. For more information:
chadkellogg.com.
LOW-IMPACT
KAYAKERS TO STUDY
ANTARCTICA
White Continent wildlife in focus
This December, Cristian
Donoso, a 33-year-old
Chilean lawyer and his team
are traveling aboard the
Antarctic Dream cruise ship
to the Antarctic Peninsula to
make an 885-kilometer selfsupported
kayak journey to
the Palmer Archipelago and
the Danco Coast. Their goal is
to study wildlife on the White
Continent and alert the public
about the effects of global
warming on the Antarctic
coast through an audiovisual
record of landscapes and
wildlife in the region.
“The Antarctic Peninsula
is warming five times faster
than the average rate of
Earth’s overall warming. Many
species that had evolved the
capacity to live in these cold,
icy, and harsh conditions are
now losing their only home,”
said Donoso. He is planning a
self-sufficient trip—not relying
on resupply, food caches, or
other kinds of external help—
following his arrival on the
Antarctic Dream, a reinforced
78-passenger Dutch-built
vessel.
Over the course of two
months, they will circumnavigate
Brabant and Anvers
islands, explore the Danco
Coast fjords, and navigate
nearly 320 kilometers between
the Chilean base, Gonzalez
Videla, and the Argentinean
Primavera Base. From there,
they will cross to Trinidad
Island, circumnavigating it
Chad Kellogg on China’s Siguniang. Photograph by Dylan Johnson.
10

EXPLORATION NEWS
African elephants. Photo by Charles Foley
until reaching Mikkelsen Bay
where they will be picked
up by the cruise ship in late
February. For more information:
cdonosochristie@yahoo.
es, www.antarctickayak.com.
Franklin Ship
Fragments Found?
Erebus and Terror search resumes
Explorers searching for two
ships—the HMS Erebus and
HMS Terror—from Sir John
Franklin’s doomed 1845
expedition have found fragments
of copper sheeting
they believe may have come
from the vessels.
Franklin and his 128-member
crew were seeking the
fabled Northwest Passage
between the Atlantic and the
Pacific oceans when their
ships became stuck in ice. All
of the men died and the ships
vanished. The team found the
fragments during a six-week
trip in August and September
to three islands near O’Reilly
Island in the Queen Maud
Gulf, close to where Franklin’s
ships are believed to have
sunk.
“This was for us, I would
say, a very significant find,”
archaeologist Robert Grenier
of Parks Canada told reporters,
noting that copper did
not exist naturally in the region
and the sheets could not have
been made by the local Inuit.
The fate of the Franklin expedition
still grips the public
imagination and previous
exploration teams have found
traces of 70 crewmembers,
many of whom started trekking
overland in desperation.
Research suggests they
suffered from lead poisoning
from either canned food or
the ships’ water supply; Inuit
stories and forensic evidence
attest cannibalism among the
doomed crew.
The Canadian government
is backing the exploration in
a bid to assert its sovereignty
over the waterways of the
Arctic. The United States,
Britain, and others disagree
with Ottawa’s position that
the waters in the Northwest
Passage itself are Canadian
rather than international
waters.
Experienced
Elephants prevail
memory a key to survival
A recent study by the Wildlife
Conservation Society (WCS)
and the Zoological Society of
London (ZSL) suggests that
old female elephants—and
perhaps their memories of
distant, life-sustaining sources
of food and water—may
be the key to survival during
the worst of times. The study,
carried out by Charles Foley
(WCS) and Nathalie Pettorell
(ZSL), examined patterns
of calf mortality during the
drought of 1993 in Tanzania’s
Tarangire National Park,
the most severe drought in
that region in the past 35
years. During a nine-month
period in that year, 16 out of
81 elephant calves died in
the three groups studied, a
mortality rate of 20 percent.
The normal mortality rate of
calves during non-drought
years is a mere 2 percent.
Researchers noted correlations
in calf survivorship with
the movements of the groups
and, in particular, the ages of
the female members within
those groups. Of the three elephant
groups observed during
the event, the two groups that
left the park suffered lower
mortality rates than the group
that remained in the northern
portion of the protected area,
which suffered a 63 percent
mortality. The two groups
that left the park, presumably
in search of food and water,
had matriarchs that were 45
and 38 years of age, respectively,
whereas the group that
remained had a matriarch that
was only 33 years of age.
The groups that left the park
may have benefited from the
specific experiences of their
matriarchs, who were able to
draw upon memories of an
earlier drought in 1958–1961
and how they survived it.
The group that remained in
Tarangire had no individuals
old enough to remember the
event. “Hopefully, this study
underlines the importance of
how crucial older matriarchs
are to the health of elephant
populations,” says Foley.
“Protecting the leaders of
elephant herds will be even
more important in what may
be an increase in droughts
due to climate change.” The
study appeared in The Royal
Society’s Biology Letter.
the explorers journal

SPECIAL REPORT
polar centennials
inspire “retraces” and new records
by Nick Smith
shackleton centenary
On October 29, 2008, 100 years to the
day after Ernest Shackleton and his
Nimrod expedition set out from Hut Point
in Antarctica on a 1,450 kilometer trek to
the South Pole, members of the Matrix
Shackleton Centenary Expedition (www.
shackletoncentenary.org) embarked on a
“retrace” of the Briton’s footsteps. While
Shackleton was forced to turn back 156
kilometers from his goal, the current
expedition plans to ”finish the job.” Led
by Lt. Col. Henry Worsley (a descendant
of Shackleton’s skipper Frank Worsley),
the expedition also includes Henry Adams
(great-grandson of Jameson Boyd-
Adams) and Will Gow, related to Sir Ernest
by marriage. Inspired by a desire to unite
Shackleton’s descendants at the pole, Gow
came up with the idea of re-creating the
expedition: “I thought it would be marvelous
to fulfill the Nimrod trip and leave a
legacy embodying Shackleton’s spirit.”
shackleton epic
Later in 2009, Tim Jarvis will lead the
Shackleton Epic Expedition (www.shack
letonepic.co.uk), which will re-create the
voyage of the James Caird from Elephant
Island to South Georgia in a replica boat,
using only a sextant for navigation. The
team will arrive at King Haakon Bay as
Shackleton did, after which they will
trek and climb over the spine of the
island to Stromess—a dangerous journey
completed by Shackleton, Frank Worsley,
and Tom Crean in an incredible (and
unbeaten) 36 hours.
Jarvis said, “In re-creating the
journey with replica equipment, we are
hoping to demonstrate the immensity of
the challenge while exploring the reality
of Shackleton’s legendary leadership.”
The expedition marks the centenary of
Ernest Shackleton’s knighthood and its
patron is the explorer’s granddaughter,
the Hon. Alexandra Shackleton.
peary centennial
And, on February 17, 2009, American
Lonnie Dupre and a team of Arctic explorers
and Inuit companions will begin an epic
2,575-kilometer dogsled journey through
the polar reaches of the High Arctic in
the footsteps of Robert E. Peary (www.
pearycentennial.com). Peary, Matthew
Henson, and an entourage of 23 men, 133
dogs, and 19 sleds set off from Ellesmere
Island on a bitterly cold March 1, 1909.
As the men traveled farther north, they
lightened their loads and reduced the size
of their party. Six men—Peary, Henson,
and four Inuit (Oatah, Egingwah, Seegloo,
and Ookeah)—claimed to have made the
pole on April 6, 1909. For 80 years,
skeptics disputed the claim. Although the
Navigation Foundation upheld it in 1989,
the controversy remains. In addition to
shedding new light on the controversy,
Dupre’s Peary Centennial Expedition will
pay homage to the Inuit people, unsung
heroes of countless Arctic expeditions,
whose culture now teeters on the edge
of existence due to the ravages of global
warming and pollution.
catlin arctic survey
Meanwhile, Pen Hadow has announced a
major scientific expedition to the North
Pole to measure the thickness of the
remaining permanent Arctic Ocean sea
ice. Called the Catlin Arctic Survey (www.
catlinarcticsurvey.com), the expedition,
which starts in February 2009, is collaborating
with scientific institutions,
including the University of Cambridge’s
Department of Applied Mathematics and
Theoretical Physics. Hadow and his team
have developed equipment for the project,
including ice-penetrating radar with a
data uplink system to transmit its findings
direct to scientists via satellite. Hadow
said, “Our physical efforts hauling the
equipment over the surface will amass data
in unprecedented detail. The Arctic Ocean is
a globally unique environment of immense
significance to the balance of the Earth’s
whole ecosystem.”
speed record
A different type of ice adventure gets
underway in March when Ben Saunders
departs on his North Pole Speed Record
(www.bensaunders.com). Saunders, who
has four North Pole expeditions under his
belt, aims to set a new world speed record
from Ward Hunt Island in northern Canada
to the Geographic North Pole. The expedition
will be solo, unsupported, and on foot,
a feat that has only ever been achieved
once, by Pen Hadow in 2003. Saunders is
aiming to halve Hadow’s time by completing
his mission in 30 days.
12

south georgia
shackleton epic
elephant island
hut point
shackleton centenary
south pole
geographic north pole
catlin arctic survey
speed record
peary centennial
ward hunt island
point barrow

ANTARCTIC RESEARCH #1
Frozen in Time
recovering climate history
in a remote region
by Glen Liston & Jan-Gunnar Winther
—“Camp Winter,” Antarctica
Since the launch of the International Polar Year
(IPY) in the spring of 2007, scientists from around
the world have joined forces in an effort to improve
our scientific understanding of Earth’s polar
regions, particularly in light of recent concern
over global climate change. This IPY—the fourth
in 125 years—has focused primarily on snow and
ice changes: reductions in extent and mass of
glaciers and ice sheets; reductions in area, timing,
and duration of snow cover; and reductions
in extent and thickness of sea ice and permafrost.
Through their associated changes in sea level,
fresh-water supplies, and air temperatures, all
a vehicle-mounted radar system is used to detect Crevasses near Troll Station. Photograph by Glen Liston.
14

Authors Glen Liston (left) and Jan-Gunnar Winther with Explorers Club Flag #24 at the 1967–1969 Plateau Station site.
have immediate and long-range consequences
for people living on Earth.
As part of this international scientific endeavor,
we initiated our joint Norwegian-American expedition
to investigate climate variability and
change over the East Antarctic Ice Sheet over
the past millennium. Carried out over two austral
summers—the first between October 2007
and January 2008, the second as you read this
story—our expedition is hoping to shed light on
the paleo-environments and climate change of
this virtually unexplored area
of Antarctica through the
collection of ice cores and
the monitoring of snow and
ice accumulations via radar
over some 2,500 kilometers
between drill sites.
During the 2007–2008
field season, our scientific
measurements included (1)
drilling 700 meters of ice
cores to measure a broad
range of chemical and physical
properties and characteristics;
(2) collecting radar
data to map snow and ice
accumulation between drill
sites using four different icepenetrating
radar systems
running continually over our route, including
one specifically designed to detect crevasses;
(3) making detailed near-surface (top 3 meters)
physical and chemical snow and ice measurements;
(4) installing two automatic weather stations;
(5) conducting unmanned aerial vehicle
(UAV) flights and measurements; and (6) making
deep-ice temperature measurements.
Having set off from the Norwegian research base
at Troll Station (72ºS, 2ºE) and carrying Explorers
Club Flag #24, our goal for the first season was
to travel overland in four tracked vehicles to the
Amundsen-Scott South Pole Research Station at
90ºS, via several historic sites, including Plateau
Station (PS) and the Pole of Inaccessibility
(POI). Our tracked vehicles pulled three heated
modules—one for sleeping, one for eating, and a
small workshop to make equipment repairs.
Established by the United States in 1965,
Plateau Station was in operation until 1969,
during which time research there focused on
atmospheric observations; its location at 3,620
meters on the broad crest of the East Antarctic
Ice Sheet provides a climate unique for its thin
air, light winds, extremely low temperatures,
and short summers. The farthest point from any
ocean, Antarctica’s Pole of Inaccessibility is
located at 82° 06’S, 54° 58’E (885 kilometers
from the South Pole) and is some 3,730 meters
above sea level. Prior to our arrival, the Pole of
Inaccessibility had been visited six times. In 1958,
a Soviet expedition left a statue of Lenin there; it is
still above the surface today,
stoically facing Moscow.
While we did in fact
reach both PS and POI that
season, we had mechanical
problems with the transfer
cases on the vehicles and
had to stop the traverse
some 350 kilometers short
of the South Pole. The abundant
data we collected was
flown to the South Pole for
shipment home while our vehicles,
modules, and sleds
remained behind at a site we
named “Camp Winter.”
This season, we began
our operations at McMurdo
in late October to gather
supplies and equipment, before heading out to
Camp Winter, where we will spend several weeks
fixing the vehicles. If all goes according to plan,
we will be well underway with our traverse to the
South Pole by December 5. We have tag-teamed
this expedition—the first crew chosen specifically
for their expertise in repairing heavy equipment.
A second team, consisting primarily of scientists,
will join us once we reach the South Pole. They
will return to Troll via a more westerly route to
collect additional data from the East Antarctic Ice
Sheet. To follow our progress, visit our website at
http://traverse.npolar.no.
biography
A fellow of The Explorers Club since 1999, Glen Liston is a senior
research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the
Atmospheric (CIRA) at Colorado State University. Jan-Gunnar
Winther, a fellow of The Explorers Club since 2000, is director of the
Norwegian Polar Institute in Tromsø, Norway.
the explorers journal

Polar reflections
excerpts from Glen Liston’s diary, 2007–2008 season
December 1
As I lie in my small tent at -48°C near the center
of Antarctica, I try mentally to force my near-frozen
toes back to life. The temperatures I am experiencing
now are just about equal to the mean annual
Antarctic air temperature in this area; something
that typically only changes slowly over the decades
and centuries. I also note that one month ago I was
flying, uncontrolled, 15 meters through the air in
response to a 52 m/s wind gust during a storm near
the Antarctic coast. I am part of a scientific research
expedition traversing from the Antarctic coast to the
South Pole, and this is exactly what we are here to
study and understand: weather and climate variability
and change on time scales of 1,000 seconds
(like my wind-borne flight) to 1,000 years (like my
cold, cold night).
December 8
Temperature -46°C, chill factor -69°C. I don’t know
if I should tell you what happened to me today.
I awoke this morning at about 5:00 a.m. to a nice
little blizzard raging outside my tent; my enthusiasm
for leaving my warm, cozy, sleeping bag was at an
all-time low. We had planned an early start, heading
to our next measurement site. I took down my tent
and packed up my sleeping gear, and headed off to
help get the two remaining vehicles started. We are
having problems with cold fuel in the mornings, and
the solution seems to be to blast the fuel filters and
lines with a monster heater system. Unfortunately
this is darned hard, cold work in these winds, cold,
and blowing snow. About halfway through the
second vehicle I started getting cold…really cold.
Even when I stopped I could not get my hands
warmed back up (and the rest of me wasn’t getting
any warmer either). This went on for a while (45
minutes?) until I realized I was in a bit of a mess.
I started having hot flashes that surged through
my body (a little strange while you feel like you are
freezing to death)…I felt like I was going to get sick
to my stomach…finally I staggered inside the dining
module to warm up, sat in a chair in kind of a stupor,
and eventually got to the point (like 30 minutes later)
where I could prepare and eat something for breakfast
and slowly recover and warm back up.
We are now driving to the next site; it will take 2.5
days to get there. From my little ordeal this morning,
I feel like every muscle in my body is sore; I have a
horrible headache; I am having muscle cramps in
my legs and feet; and sometime during all of this
my left thumb split again and hurts like fire. Jan-
Gunnar is driving, so I can doctor my thumb, eat
and drink some more, take some aspirin, and get
some much-needed rest. I will be okay. I remember
a time during one of my Arctic traverses when I had
to do something (cold, hard work) without benefit
of food and with similar consequences. I could not
stay warm no matter what I tried. I will be careful not
to let that happen again! I do not like the results; my
body is feeling like it was half destroyed by what I
did to it this morning!
December 20
I think my toothbrush finally died this morning; it
just looks all worn out. Somehow letting it freeze
after every use, and using it when it is frozen and
stiff, seems to be taking a toll on the bristles. I will
16

Ice-core processing operations, right. Glen Liston, left, prepares to descend into the old Plateau Station. Photographs by Jan-Gunnar Winther
have to dig around for one of my spares. I didn’t
change my underwear on Friday. I think that was a
mistake, so now I have to decide whether to wait
until next Friday or change them today or tomorrow,
which would kind of screw up my every third Friday
schedule! I’ve also lost track of when I changed
my socks last; and then there is the shower situation;
my last one was on the 25th of October. Isn’t
it kind of funny to think that Christmas will be my
two-month no-shower anniversary…I guess not.
By the end of this expedition, I will have gone 89
days without a shower. I suppose I could give you
my theory about showers on these trips…it goes
something like this: after a few days our bodies
reach some kind of equilibrium with regard to dirt,
oils, and smells; and it is our clothes that keep
getting “worse.” This is why it is so important to
change your clothes every few weeks…because
they basically start to rot on your body while your
body is still doing fine.
December 21
Things are going pretty well with the ice coring,
although my thumbs nearly freeze every time I
handle a new 1-meter core section that comes out
of the hole. We are deep enough in the Ice Sheet
now that the ice-core temperatures equal the mean
annual air temperature of this area, about -55°C,
so they are darn cold to handle with lightly gloved
hands. The light gloves are required for note taking
and the bagging of the ice cores.
While our science measurements are going
wonderfully, our vehicles are having their share of
problems…this morning after 2 hours of driving,
Jack (the vehicle I was driving at the time) destroyed
its gearbox, spewed hot oil, and promptly caught
fire (or I should say the oil on the ground caught
fire, not the vehicle); I put the fire out by throwing
snow on it—it was just a small fire. A pretty exciting
morning…one I could have done without…one we
all could have done without. Fortunately, we have
one spare gearbox left (a rebuilt one) to replace it
with; about a ten-hour job that should be done in a
few more hours. Our mechanics are amazing! We
would literally be going nowhere without them.
December 23
Yesterday was amazing for us. We spent hours
down (I went down 4 times) in the old Plateau
Station building. It was nice to be out of the
wind, but was a little cold (-51.3°C)! We entered
through a hole in one of the station observation
towers, starting about 5 meters above the station
floor. I had the honor of being the first one down
into the station. I say honor because there was
some question about how safe it would be down
there, with possibilities of no oxygen, poisonous
gases from old station supplies, etc. For some
reason Jan-Gunnar figured I was the one expedition
member they could most easily do without!
Einar (our Norwegian Polar Institute “Man of the
Year”) also went with me. Anyway, everything was
fine, and it was nice to think that I was the first
American in the station in about 40 years (it closed
in 1969). Talk about stepping back in time; it was
like they just walked away, leaving most everything
as it was while they were living there! We
saw shaving kits and toothbrushes, cupboards full
of food, numerous flashlights in case of a winter
power outage, chairs neatly turned over and sitting
on the dining-room table, and a fully stocked
medical cabinet. Our visit was made particularly
eerie because, at these temperatures, the moisture
from your breath freezes instantly, creating
an ice fog that got thicker and thicker the longer
we were below the surface and in the station.
But my strongest reaction was that it looked like
a pretty small place for 8 people to be spending
the winter!
the explorers journal

ANTARCTIC RESEARCH #2
a turbulent
World Below
by David K.A. Barnes
On polar shores or in the shallows
of the continental shelf, the
dominant sound is the pounding
of ice on rock—one of the most
intense natural disturbances on
Earth. Divers from the British
Antarctic Survey are beginning
to get used to the sound of this
hammering of the shallows by ice
as they have been studying the
effect of so-called “ice-scour”
on marine biodiversity and how
this is likely to alter with climate change. To life
on the seabed, ice impacts are catastrophic: the
forces involved crush rock and completely reshape
topography. Measuring and understanding icescour
is important because it dominates the structure
of life on the continental shelf, which is where
the vast majority of Antarctica’s rich, documented
18
biodiversity occurs. Not only
that, but parts of the Arctic and
Antarctic Peninsula are among
the most rapidly changing places
on the planet, with warming
seas, disappearing sea ice, and
retreating glaciers—all of which
potentially influence the magnitude
and frequency of ice-scour
disturbance.
Between 2000 and 2002 the
British Antarctic Survey (BAS)
team surveyed two sites on the west coast of
the Antarctic Peninsula in Ryder Bay, adjacent to
Rothera Research Station. They established that
most of the seabed at about 15 meters depth is hit
every year, sometimes more than once, and linked
these impacts to patterns of age, mortality, and
structure in the benthos. In 2003, these two sites
Sculptured iceberg in North Bay, Rothera Point, Antarctica. Image © Pete Bucktrout/British Antarctic Survey

A sea anemone with feeding tentacles everted in 25 meters of clear water during the Antarctic winter. Image © Simon Brockington/British Antarctic Survey.
were established to monitor seasonal and annual
patterns of impacts. Using molds, they made
concrete markers with plasticine tops, which were
then deployed by divers at three depths (5, 15 and
25 meters below) on the seabed. The concrete
markers were laid out as triplicate grids, such that
levels and frequencies of impact could be compared
across three depths, two sites, and across
grids (within sites—thus, two spatial scales). At
the start of each year the BAS divers resurveyed
the grids of markers and replaced all those that
were damaged. From this data, they were able to
determine the frequency of ice-scour by counting
the number of damaged or destroyed markers.
Not surprisingly, the deepest markers, placed at
25 meters, were the least hit and resurvey multiple
times during 2004 and 2005 showed a strong
seasonality in ice impacts. When the sea surface
was frozen during winter, icebergs were locked in
place and could not drift with currents and wind to
smash into differing seabed areas—so ice-scour
mainly occurred during the summer. One of the
most fascinating insights to come out of our research
was a new understanding of the seasonal
activity of scavengers for which ice-scour provides
much of their food.
In a recent paper we published in Science, lead
author, Dan Smale of the BAS said, “It has been
suggested previously that iceberg disturbance
rates may be driven by the formation of winter
sea ice, but nobody’s been able to go out and
measure it before. We were surprised to see how
strong the relationship is between the two factors.
During years with a long sea ice season of eight
months or so, the disturbance rates were really
low, whereas in poor sea ice years the seabed
was pounded by ice for most of the year.” This
was certainly the case in 2007.
the explorers journal

Sea urchins and soft corals
A group of sea urchins and soft corals thrive in springtime in the
shallows (12 meters) off Rothera. Image © Simon Brockington/
British Antarctic Survey.

Around the West Antarctic Peninsula, sea surface
temperatures have rapidly increased over
the past half-century and the area and duration
of sea ice is decreasing. The strong relationship
between sea ice duration and scouring suggest
that life in the shallows is going to take an increasingly
severe hammering as climate change
intensifies. It is especially hard for organisms
in polar waters to recover from this as they live
life in the slow lane. They live long lives, grow
and reproduce slowly, and take a long time to
reach reproductive maturity—all of which makes
recovery from severe disturbance difficult. Yet,
life on Antarctica’s seabed has proved very resilient
in tough times. Not only does seabed life
resist the giant forces of iceberg scouring, it is
already rich and abundant on a continental shelf
that is thought to have been near entirely covered
by grounded ice sheets during the most recent
glaciation just a few thousand years ago.
22
The austral summer of 2008/2009 has begun
along the Antarctic Peninsula and at Rothera
Research Station, our BAS divers are preparing
for the annual resurvey of the grids and
the replacement of damaged markers. We will
then match the latest impact data with the number
of days that have had fast ice in the same
area. Maybe the record pounding of the seabed
by ice in 2007 has been beaten and the scavengers
are out in greatest force, mopping up
the legions of the dead and dying in the wake of
crushing icebergs.
biography
David K. A. Barnes is near-shore marine section head in the biological
sciences division of the British Antarctic Survey. He and others in the
BIOPEARL project have been investigating the structure, dynamics,
and affinities of biodiversity on the continental shelf and slope around
West Antarctica, from the Scotia Arc to the Amundsen Sea.
cushion stars (Odontaster validus) feed on seal feces in the shallows of South Cove inLate winter. Image © Simon Brockington/British Antarctic Survey

ANTARCTIC RESEARCH #3
into an
u n c h a r t e d
realm
text and images by Daniel Jones
The AUV Autosub is deployed in Antarctica.
Shackleton sailed past it, unaware
of its presence, while
most of today’s polar explorers
live for years at a time above it
on bases moving with the relentless
flow of ice toward the sea. It
is a 1.5-million-square-kilometer
habitat that lays hidden in
the vast, uncharted chasms
beneath the polar ice-shelves,
which have been in existence at
least since the last ice age when
Antarctica’s continental ice retreated
to its present position.
Until recently, this sub-zero
world has remained beyond the
reach of humans, being some
350 to 800 meters underwater
and covered by 400 meters of
ice. Reaching just the periphery
of this world pushes the very
edge of diving possibility to the
the explorers journal

limit (see The Explorers Journal, Spring 2008),
while exploring areas hundreds of kilometers
inland from the seaward edge to the grounding
line—where the ice shelf meets bedrock—has long
been thought to be impossible. That was until recently,
when we began to enter this secret realm
with the aid of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles
(AUVs)—unmanned, untethered submarines
capable of long-distance operations, controlled
by computer in a similar fashion to autopilot in a
commercial aircraft.
Developed at the National Oceanography
Centre by the United Kingdom’s Natural
Environment Research Council in Southampton,
the Autosub AUV is at the forefront of this technology.
Capable of diving to depths of more than
a kilometer over a range of 700 kilometers, while
carrying a suite of sensors and scientific instruments,
the AUV has been deployed on more than
300 missions in less hostile environments. This
past year, our Autosub team felt ready to undertake
this most extreme of journeys, deep under
the Antarctic ice sheets and into the last truly
unexplored habitat on our planet.
The world’s deep-ocean waters are formed
with the sinking of cold, dense water at the poles.
In Antarctica much of this water formation occurs
under the ice shelves. The structure of the
underside of the ice is important in controlling
the circulation of this water and hence the rate of
transport to other areas. In terms of biology, the
24
shallow and deep waters of Antarctica are known
for high faunal abundance and diversity. The
deep-water communities are fed from the massive
blooms of algae that occur in surface waters
in the summer each year. Under the ice, where
the entire area is completely dark and there is no
such supply of nutrients, no one knows what effects
this has on life on the seafloor. By sending
Autosub under the ice, we hoped to find answers
to these important questions.
A team of scientists from around the world
was assembled for our project, each focusing on
a specific aspect of under-ice area. We met at
the start of the Austral Summer on the Falkland
Islands, a common starting point for Antarctic
expeditions, to join the British Antarctic Survey
ship James Clark Ross, named after one of the
pioneering Antarctic explorers. Autosub was
already aboard with a host of other scientific
instruments for seabed mapping, deep-water
photography, seawater property measurement,
and biological sampling.
The vessel left the calm waters of Stanley
straight into rough weather. The waters of
the Drake Passage, between Cape Horn and
Antarctica are renowned for their storms.
Fortunately for us, we managed to escape relatively
unscathed as we followed Shackleton’s
historic route past South Georgia to the eastern
side of the Weddell Sea. The plan was to
make our way through a lead—or area of open
A science team setting off to measure sea-ice thickness around the UK Royal Research Ship James Clark Ross. Left to right: Daniel Jones, Jeremy Wilkinson, Martin Stott, and Nick Hughes.

water—that forms in the summer each year at the
eastern edge of the Weddell Sea as the Antarctic
catabatic winds blow the sea ice away from the
continent. Unlike Shackleton, who had to sail
unknowing into these icy waters, we had daily
satellite pictures of ice extent, enabling us to
plan our upcoming operations effectively, based
on prevailing sea-ice conditions. Our intended
target for Autosub operations was the Filchner-
Ronne Ice Shelf, the largest in Antarctica.
Unfortunately, this was unobtainable as a 100-
kilometer stretch of sea ice prevented access.
The decision was made to target the Fimbul Ice
Shelf to the northeast. We arrived at the edge of
the towering ice sheet, a sheer cliff rising more
than 50 meters vertically above water and much
further below. A vehicle as technologically complex
as Autosub needs systematic testing and
trials as a warm-up before a big mission. This is
especially important as a problem under the ice
means the loss of a multi-million-dollar vehicle.
With a successful completion of the testing,
Autosub was reloaded with its 5,000 D-cell
batteries and prepared for its first under-ice mission.
We programmed it to fly 100 meters below
the base of the ice shelf and to map it by taking
high-resolution acoustic depth measurements
as it made its way 25 kilometers under the ice.
We launched the vehicle, and watched it power
up and autonomously slip quietly beneath the
calm surface to start its mission. There is little
the science team could do other than wait and
anxiously hope for a safe return; the time instead
was used to make shipboard measurements of
the structure of the water column to compare
with the AUV data when it returned.
A signal on the ship’s hydrophone notified the
team of a safe return of Autosub, unscarred by
its pioneering voyage. The seven-meter-long yellow
submarine surfaced to a hero’s reception. As
soon as the sub emerged, recorded data were
downloaded via a wireless link.
As the results came in, we were surprised to
discover the base of the ice-shelf was so heavily
crevassed and scored with ridges and valleys,
providing much higher friction for water transport
than we had previously imagined. These data
invalidated large parts of the ocean circulation
prediction models that had assumed a uniform
flat surface. Some useful measurements of
temperature and salinity were made as well as
a measure of the amount of suspended particulates
in the water column, which, as expected,
decreased with distance from the ice edge.
With buoying enthusiasm we reprogrammed
the vehicle to carry out a 50-kilometer mission
under the ice, yo-yoing through the water-filled
void under the ice to make measurements of water
properties. The mission seemed to be going well
when the emergency beacon on the sub began to
ping, some 17 kilometers into the ice-shelf cavity.
Most of the data are contained on the vehicle
and can only be assessed with its return; only
a minimal stream of information is transmitted
acoustically to the ship. We tried to use the
homing system to guide the submarine back to
the safety of open water but we did not get a response.
With 24 hours and no change in position
we had to assume the worst. From the limited
information and the behavior of the vehicle, we
assumed an electrical fault had developed and
the vehicle had gone into emergency mode,
which usually results in a safe buoyant ascent to
the surface. Unfortunately, ice blocked the sub’s
ascent and the AUV froze into the underside of
the ice. This lasting memory of the fragility of
human creation in nature’s extremes shows the
danger—fortunately not to human life here—of
pushing the barriers of exploration.
Despite the loss of Autosub, the science
did not stop. A valuable opportunity to access
the eastern Weddell Sea was not wasted. We
discovered new insights into the role of iceberg
disturbance on deep-water seabed communities,
a major force down to more than 500 meters in
depth. We observed the changing water properties
during an Antarctic blizzard that hit the
ship while we were sampling. Sea ice, formed
directly from seawater freezing, was investigated
by sending a team from the vessel with drills to
check ice floe thickness and to compare it to satellite
records. We returned successful in many
ways but without the pioneering submersible
that had provided us with a fleeting glimpse of an
extraordinary place.
biography
A Fellow of The Explorers Club since 2007, Daniel Jones is a researcher
in polar deep-water benthic biology at the National Oceanography
Centre, Southampton, UK. He is director of the SERPENT project
www.serpentproject.com.
the explorers journal

igloo builder
Confessions
catching up with Norbert E. Yankielun
As the long winter nights close in and the wind outside
begins to howl, The Explorers Journal thought it an
ideal time to contemplate the art of Arctic survival
and, in particular, the virtues of that most iconic of
Arctic structures, the igloo. In doing so, we caught up
with Norbert E. Yankielun, a former researcher for
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Cold Regions Research
Engineering Laboratory (CRREL), and author of the
recently released How to Build an Igloo and Other Snow
Shelters (W.W. Norton, 2007).
26
EJ: What piqued your interest in igloos?
NY: In the winter of 1990, I was working on my
engineering Ph.D. in geophysical instrumentation
at Dartmouth when a call went out for volunteers
to help during an igloo-building event
at the Montshire Museum of Science in nearby
Norwich, VT. I have always enjoyed backwoods
hiking during the winter months and, being game
for something different to do that weekend, I offered
to assist. The workshop, which attracted
Paul Nicklen / National Geographic

hundreds of adults and children, was led by Dudley
Weider, a physician from the Dartmouth Mary
Hitchcock Hospital, who had spent a number of
years practicing medicine in the Arctic, where he
learned the art of snow construction from the local
Inuit. It was so much fun, I agreed to help the following
year, after which I was completely hooked.
The next year, I actually conducted the workshop
myself as Weider had another commitment.
In the years since, I have been to the Arctic and
Antarctic many times as a researcher—primarily
using radar to take snow and ice measurements. In
addition to collecting climate data, we have used
the technology to detect crevasses during traverses
of Antarctica. As part of my work, I have both attended
and conducted a number of cold-weather
survival workshops. The most memorable was what
is known as the “Happy Camper School” for those
working at “deep field” sites in Antarctica. Building
igloos and other emergency snow shelters has
remained a key part of that learning experience.
EJ: It is rumored that a properly built igloo is so
strong, polar bears often climb atop abandoned
ones to survey the landscape for prey.
NY: The igloo is the highest art of snow construction,
requiring the precise shaping and placing of
snow blocks to form a stable and strong domeshaped
structure.
Two structural forces are present in snow
shelter construction: compression and tension.
Compression occurs when weight is applied
that squeezes the snow crystals closer together.
Tension occurs with the applied force pulls the
snow crystals apart. The bonded ice crystal of
sintered snow holds up well under compression;
it can bear substantial weight without crumbling.
Under tension, however, the same block of snow
would easily be torn apart with very little force.
For this reason, a cross-section of an igloo more
closely resembles a parabolic arch than a hemisphere.
Structurally, parts of a hemisphere are
in compression while others are in tension. If the
tension were great enough to break the ice crystal
bonds, the hemisphere-shape igloo would collapse.
On the other hand, the entire cross-section
of the parabolic-shape igloo is in compression and
therefore a much stronger, more stable structure.
EJ: How long does it take one person to build, say,
a two-person igloo?
NY: With the proper snow available and some
experience, an igloo can be constructed in two
to three hours. The key ingredient is proper construction
material—cold, dense, dry snow. For the
Inuit, they have had better building materials and,
of course, generations of experience.
EJ: How long does an igloo last?
NY: In the Arctic or in places where melt from warm
temperatures is not an issue, an igloo can last the
better part of a winter season.
EJ: Can you tell us more about the igloo-building
workshops you conduct during the snowy winter
months?
NY: I will be doing several public workshops during
the winter in addition to the one I do every year
at the Montshire Museum of Science, which will
be held on February 14 (www.montshire.org/
events.html). Feel free to contact me for details
(igloo@doctorwhy.com) or visit my website at
doctorwhy.com.
EJ: So what led you to write your book?
NY: It was serendipity, really. We had invited a New
York Times writer up to one of our workshops,
hoping for some coverage for an upcoming
Montshire Museum workshop. Several weeks later,
a story on our program came out in the travel section.
Then, out of nowhere, I got a call from W.W.
Norton asking if I was interested in writing a book.
Obviously, the answer was, “But of course.”
EJ: Out of curiosity, we noticed that you carry the
moniker “Dr. Why.” How did that come about?
NY: At some point, I was giving a presentation on
Antarctic research to a grade school class. The
kids had a difficult time pronouncing my name,
Yankielun. To make things easier, the teacher
asked if they might just call me “Dr. Y.” Somehow,
it just stuck.
EJ: So what’s next?
NY: I have recently retired from CRREL and have
decided to devote myself to helping polar projects
wherever I can. I continue to conduct igloo-building
workshops and use my background in geophysical
instrumentation and remote field and expeditionary
skills to support scientific discovery. I also happen
to be a wilderness EMT and amateur radio operator—skills
that have been valuable in the field.
the explorers journal

An Igloo How-To:
8 steps to a perfect
snow structure
text by Norbert E. Yankielun, illustrations by Amelia Bauer
2. Make a snow angel at the place you plan to build. The
outline gives a good idea of the size of the igloo interior.
1. The best building material for an igloo is dense, cold,
dry, wind-packed snow—the type you can walk on without
leaving footprints. While such snow can be found out West,
in New England it is a relative rarity. There is another way:
Shortly after a snowfall of about 6 inches or more, begin
collecting the snow into a pile. Pick an area no larger than
10 feet by 10 feet, near where the igloo is to be built. Pack
the snow down to create a uniformly dense block. Continue
adding snow and compacting until there is a flat-topped,
straight-sided “sheet cake” of compacted snow approximately
18 to 24 inches high. Wait at least a couple of hours
for the snow to firm up before cutting snow blocks.
28
3. Using an ordinary carpenter’s saw, cut blocks of a uniform
size. A good size is 18 to 24 inches long, by 9 to 12
inches thick, by 12 to 18 inches tall.
illustrations courtesy W.W. Norton

4. Place blocks in a circle around the impression of the
snow angel. Trim the blocks with the saw so that they fit
tightly together. Make sure the blocks are placed on a solid
foundation and won’t shift under the weight of the blocks
that will be placed on top of them.
5. After the first ring of blocks is in place, cut away a
portion of several of the blocks to create a ramp. The ramp
should continue between half and three-quarters of the
way around the circle of blocks. To form the ramp, start
at a joint between two blocks and cut away, discarding the
top portion of each block as you go.
7. Before the wall gets too high, it is a good idea to
have someone stand inside to assist with construction.
They should have a saw handy to help with the shaping
of blocks and be prepared to remain inside until the igloo
is completed.
Continue stacking and shaping the blocks in an upward,
inward, circular spiral until there is only a small opening
at the very top of the igloo; the opening should be a bit
smaller than the size of the blocks that have been used
in construction.
Cut and place the cap block, or “king block.” It is like a
cork plugging the hole in the top of the igloo, supporting
the inward-leaning walls of the dome. This block takes
a bit of careful shaping. Select a block that is slightly
larger than the remaining opening in the igloo. Taper the
sides of the block to match the taper of the hole in the
dome. Place it into position, but be careful not to lean
against the igloo walls.
6. Starting at the bottom of the ramp, place blocks on the
base. The very first block should be half as long as the one
underneath it, so that the seams between the blocks will
be staggered, like a brick wall. Then start placing blocks on
the base, one after another, shaving the blocks so that they
fit tightly together. Also shave the top surface of the blocks
so they angle slightly inward toward the center of the igloo.
To get this right, place a small branch or ski pole vertically
at the center of the igloo. There should be a straight line of
sight when looking along the top of an angled block toward
the base of the center point marker.
8. Now create an entrance. Choose the location of the
entryway so that the arch of the opening will be centered beneath
a solid snow block and not directly beneath the seam
between two blocks. With your saw, cut an arch-shaped
doorway in the side of the igloo. This opening should be just
large enough for a person to crawl through easily, not much
bigger than about 2 by 2 feet. If you want, you can also build
a snow-block tunnel entrance to stop the wind. It is a good
idea to have an open vent hole near the top of your structure
to ensure a reliable supply of fresh air.
With a bit of practice and a couple of helpers, an igloo
can be built in two to three hours once the snowpack is
prepared. After the heavy lifting is done, crawl into your
igloo, sit on an insulating pad, relax with a thermos of your
favorite hot beverage, and enjoy a job well done!
the explorers journal

White Bears
Green Grass
dispatch from Hudson Bay
July 20, 2008. First stop,
Montreal, then a flight to
Churchill, Manitoba, aboard
a plane that has a polar bear
painted on the tail fin. As a
lecturer, I am en route to join
an “expedition” aboard the
Lyubov Orlova, whose itinerary
for the next ten days will include
an eastward voyage across
Hudson Bay, and an excursion
by Richard Ellis
into the wilds of Nunavut, visiting
various locations where we
might expect to see a sample
of the region’s wildlife: caribou,
musk oxen, walruses, all sorts
of birds—and maybe even polar
bears. At the Churchill airport,
we board orange school buses
that will transport us to the
docks, where we will board the
Orlova after a brief tour of the
Juvenile polar bear in the grass, Churchill, July 2008.
facing page, Polar bear photographed from the Russian icebreaker Kapitan Dranitsyn, July, 1994. Photographs by Richard Ellis.
30

Canadian outback village that has come to be
known as “the polar bear capital of the world.”
I have been to Churchill before; it is here that
large numbers of polar bears congregate in the
fall before heading out onto the newly formed ice
of Hudson Bay to spend the Arctic winter hunting
seals. In October and November, visitors to
Churchill are taken out in “tundra buggies” to watch
the great white bears up close, but for the most
part, the bears are oblivious to tourists, occasionally
sniffing around the buggies’ enormous tires—useful
in navigating the marshy tundra—much to the gasping
delight of camera-happy visitors, who seem to
derive a thrill from fantasizing about the prospect of
bears climbing into the buggies to eat them.
We have come off-season. It is high summer,
and the landscape here at the border between
sub-Arctic and Arctic Canada is lush and green.
I am about to stand up
and tell the passengers
not to expect polar
bears this early in the
year, when somebody
looking out the window
shouts, “Polar bear!”
Damned if there isn’t
a single, smallish bear
wandering along the
grassy strip that divides
our road from another.
The driver brings the
bus to a halt so people
can photograph the
bear through the windows. Some of us actually
leave the bus to photograph the bear, now behind
us and nonchalantly walking away. We have witnessed
what historically would have been a polar
bear anomaly: a wild bear against a background of
grass and trees rather than snow and ice.
In July 1994, I was aboard the Russian icebreaker
Kapitan Dranitsyn bound for the North
Pole when I heard the announcement that a polar
bear had been sighted close to the ship. When I
reached the foredeck, I pushed my way through
the crowd that had gathered along the rail and
looked down. On the ice, a full-grown polar bear
was standing on its hind legs, waiting for crewmen
to throw a slice of bread.
That summer, the polar ice cap was three meters
thick, and our two icebreakers had a hell of a time
crunching through to the North Pole. Six years
later, observers aboard the nuclear icebreaker
Yamal saw only open water, prompting Malcolm
McKenna, an AMNH paleontologist and lecturer
on board the ship, to take photographs and send
them to The New York Times. Within weeks, his
images were reproduced on the front page of the
paper, alongside an article: “Age-Old Icecap at
North Pole Is Now Liquid, Scientists Find.” Dated
August 19, 2000, the article was among the first
popular reports to discuss the diminution of the
Arctic ice cap.
Much has been made of the story that polar bears,
unable to find ice on which to hunt seals, take to the
water in search of food. Because the ice has melted,
and without ice there are no seals, the bears swim
until they drown. The real threat is the loss of habitat
as a function of global warming. Greenhouse gases
in the atmosphere cause rising temperatures in the
Arctic, which means that
the Arctic’s ice cover
is shrinking. The loss
of sea ice may indeed
cause individual bears
to swim in search of a
floe, and there already is
some documentation of
this happening. Habitat
modification has always
been considered a
major factor in putting
species at risk—think
of burning the Amazon
rainforests or building
hotels on turtle-nesting beaches. In the Arctic, the
shrinking ice is not just modifying the bears’ habitat,
it is destroying it completely. Because every living
thing in the Arctic ecosystem is—or soon will be—
affected by the reduction of the ice cap, the bears,
the seals, the walruses, the whales, and even the
birds are threatened.
Everyone agrees that the Arctic ice pack is
shrinking, and therefore it stands to reason
that the bears that rely on it for their food supply
should somehow be protected. One way to
provide some level of protection for a species
considered to be in trouble, at least in the United
States, is to change the rules on hunting or disturbing
the animals—in other words, put them on
the Endangered Species List, the stated purpose
of which is to protect not only species but “the
ecosystems upon which they depend.”
the explorers journal

In December 2006, Secretary of the Interior Dirk
Kempthorne announced that the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service was proposing to list the polar bear
as a “threatened” species under the Endangered
Species Act, and initiated a scientific review to
determine the status of the species, a move that
would launch one of the most politically charged
conservation battles in recent years. Listing the
polar bear as endangered would puts a moratorium
on subsistence hunting, oil prospecting, and oildrilling—all
of which adversely affect the animals.
“The state of Alaska,” wrote Tom Kizzia in the
Anchorage Daily News on September 8, 2007,
“fearing consequences for subsistence hunting
and oil production, has strenuously opposed a
federal threatened-species listing, arguing, among
other things, that bear populations have been
stable and that too much uncertainty surrounds
global warming trends.” But there is no uncertainty
in the 2006 report by James Hansen, in which he
states that in the past 30 years, the average world
surface temperatures have increased 0.2°C per
decade, but parts of the Arctic have experienced
tenfold the average warming.
The U.S. Geological Survey Reports that
Secretary Kempthorne requested have since been
issued, and the overall conclusion reads as follows:
Projected changes in sea ice conditions, if realized,
will result in loss of approximately 2/3 of the world’s
polar bear population by the mid-twenty-first century.
Because the observed trajectory of Arctic sea ice decline
appears to be underestimated by current available
models, this assessment of future polar bear status may
be conservative. Listing the polar bear as endangered
will not cool the Arctic and stop the ice from melting,
but encouraging sport hunting and oil drilling in the
bears’ Alaska habitat will speed them along the slippery
slope toward extinction.
In the months before our departure for Churchill
in summer 2008, the issue had heated up. The
Minerals Management Service announced that it
would be seeking bids for petroleum licenses in a
12,000-square-kilometer area of the Chukchi Sea
between Alaska and the coast of the Russian Far
East, the home of one of the main populations of polar
bears in U.S. and Russian territories. In response
to this announcement, Brendan Cummings of the
Center for Biological Diversity in San Francisco
said, “The polar bear is in need of intensive care,
but with this lease sale, the Bush administration is
threatening to burn down the hospital.”
As written, and without any modification, the
Endangered Species Act protects the habitat of
a species classified as threatened (not to mention
endangered), and the very act of drilling in the
Chukchi Sea is hazardous to the bears—think of
oil spills, which are part of the process.
On February 6, 2008, the Department of
the Interior auctioned off the oil leases in the
Chukchi Sea. Immediately, Royal Dutch Shell
bid $105 million for a single exploration block,
and $2.1 billion for 275 tracts. Some 25 years
ago, Shell had explored the same regions they
leased in 2008, but relinquished the leases as
uneconomic. Now high oil prices have transformed
previously undesirable high cost regions
into exploration hotspots for oil companies, and
extinction hotspots for polar bears.
On March 11, 2008, a coalition of environmental
groups sued the Bush administration for delaying
a decision to protect polar bears threatened with
extinction due to Arctic ice melt. One day before
the Department of the Interior was to appear in
court to respond to the environmentalists’ lawsuit,
Kempthorne declared the polar bear “threatened”
under the Endangered Species Act. Even though
it took pressure from environmental groups to
force the release of the report, Interior had known
for a long time that the bears were in trouble. At a
May 14 press conference at which he announced
the decision, Kempthorne said: “Today I am listing
the polar bear as a threatened species under the
Endangered Species Act. I believe this decision
is most consistent with the record and legal standards
of the Endangered Species Act—perhaps
the least flexible law Congress has ever enacted.
I am also announcing that this listing decision will
be accompanied by administrative guidance and a
rule that defines the scope of impact that my decision
will have, in order to protect the polar bear
while preventing unintended harm to the society
and economy of the United States… ”
Those who opposed the listing of the polar
bear did so because they felt it would be bad for
business. Canadian Inuit saw the disappearance
of the large fees—up to $40,000 per hunt—which
they had been getting from American sportsmen,
because the Endangered Species Act prohibits
the import of polar bear trophies into the United
States. The oil companies expected to go to
32

Male polar bear at Churchill, November, 2005. Photograph by Nancy Harris.
court to ensure that the listing would in no way
interfere with the newly acquired oil leases,
and Alaska’s legislators, from Governor Sarah
Palin, Representative Don Young, and the two
Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski and Ted
Stevens, came out strongly antibear and pro-oildrilling.
A week after the Interior Department’s
announcement, Governor Palin announced that
the state of Alaska would sue the U.S. government
to stop the listing, arguing that the listing
would slow the state’s economic development—
for which read: more oil prospecting.
A month after the polar bear was declared
an endangered species, the Fish and Wildlife
Service gave permission to the oil companies to
annoy and harm the bears should they interfere
with oil exploration. Exploring in the Chukchi Sea’s
120,000 square kilometers will require drill ships,
icebreakers, barges, tugs, helicopter overflights,
and hundreds of kilometers of ice trails and roads
along the coastline. The materiel and activity will
incite the natural curiosity of the bears, and there
is no question that bears that come too close to oil
workers or road builders will be seen as threats.
As the men will surely be armed to protect themselves
from marauding bears, any bear that comes
within rifle range will be shot. It is hard to imagine
any more flagrant disregard of the Endangered
Species Act than shooting the species that has
just been declared endangered—and then holding
the shooters harmless.
When I returned from Churchill in August, Palin
was campaigning strenuously for the office of
Vice President on the Republican ticket; she was
still a vociferous opponent of listing the bear as
an endangered species because it would interfere
with oil exploration and drilling. I believe the bears
may have just gotten a break with the defeat of
the McCain/Palin ticket in the presidential election,
and with the defeat of Ted Stevens, another
advocate of delisting the polar bear, in the Alaska
senate race, after the senator was found guilty of
concealing improper gifts he received from an oil
services company executive.
biography
A Fellow of The Explorers Club, Richard Ellis is a painter and
the author of 20 books, including Great White Shark, Men
and Whales, Search for the Giant Squid, The Empty Ocean,
and Tuna: a Love Story. He is working on a book about global
warming and the polar bear.
the explorers journal

Extreme ice
surveying Earth’s changing glaciers
text and images by James Balog
As a nature photographer, I have spent the better
part of the past three years documenting the
impact of climate change on Earth’s fragile polar
environments. In the process, i have seen extraordinary
amounts of ice vanish with shocking speed.
Features that took centuries to develop are
being destroyed in just a few years and, in some
instances, in just a few weeks. In 2006, I launched
the Extreme Ice Survey to capture in real time the
dramatic changes in our planet’s frozen zones over
a multiyear period using time-lapse photography,
conventional photography, and video.
Twenty-seven time-lapse cameras were
installed at 18 sites in Greenland, Iceland,
Alaska, the Rocky Mountains, and British
Columbia, while a dozen positions for
annual repeat photography have been established
in Iceland, the Alps, and Bolivia.
The time-lapse frames will be compiled into
video animations, providing dramatic visual
evidence of how our Arctic and alpine
landscapes are being transformed, conveying
the reality and immediacy of global
warming.
Our Nikon D-200 digital, single-lens, reflex
cameras—powered by a custom-made
combination of solar panels, batteries,
and other electronics—are programmed to
shoot once an hour, every hour of daylight.
Batteries provide power during nights and
overcast days. To compensate for dramatic
swings in daylight hours at different times
of the year, we have constructed customized
intervalometers to trigger the cameras.
Protected by waterproof and dustproof
Pelican cases, the cameras are mounted on
Bogen tripod heads and secured against
the Arctic and alpine winds by a complex
system of aluminum and steel anchors, and
stainless steel aircraft cable guy wires. The
setups, which weigh 70 pounds or more,
must withstand winds as high as 270 kph,
temperatures as low as -40°C, blizzards,
landslides, torrential rain, and avalanches.
Each camera captures some 4,000 images
a year, for a total projected archive of more
than 400,000 photographs by the time we
complete the survey in late summer 2009.
Our camera sites are accessed via foot,
horseback, dogsled, skis, fishing boats,
and helicopters. Downloads of digital images
occur as frequently as once a month
or as rarely as once a year, depending on
the accessibility of the site. For more on our
project, see extremeicesurvey.org.
b i o g r a p h y
James Balog’s work has been published in numerous
magazines, including National Geographic, The New Yorker,
Life, Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, Audubon, and
Outside. He is the author of six books—Wildlife Requiem
(1984), Survivors: A New Vision of Endangered Wildlife
(1990), Anima (1993), James Balog’s Animals A to Z (1996),
Animal (1999), and Tree: A New Vision of the American Forest
(2004). A book chronicling his current work, Extreme
Ice Now—Vanishing Glaciers and Changing Climate: A Progress
Report is to be released by National Geographic in April
2009.
Sólheimajökull
An EIS team member provides scale in a massive landscape of
crevasses on Iceland’s Sólheimajökull.

S p e r r y G l a c i e r ,
Glacier National Park
Since 1850, the Sperry Glacier’s surface area has decreased 70 to
75 percent. As the ice vanishes, ice-scoured bedrock, newly formed
meltwater lakes, and waterfalls appear.

Columbia Glacier
The calving face of Columbia Glacier in June 2006. Since 1984, the
glacier has retreated more than 16 kilometers. Glaciologists consider
Columbia to be a worrisome indicator of what Greenland’s gigantic
tidewater glaciers might do, and may in fact already be doing.

Huayna Potosi
Climbers work their way through crevasses and seracs some 5,760
meters up on Bolivia’s Huayna Potosi. Nourished by snowfall generated
by the collision of air masses from the Pacific Ocean and
Amazon basin, the glaciers have lost an average of one half meter of
thickness a year for the past three decades.

Jökulsárlón
Decaying ice and icebergs on the surface of Jökulsárlón in southeast
Iceland drain off a great ice cap called the Vatnajökull. Jökulsárlón,
which means “glacial lagoon,” did not exist until the 1930s. The
glaciers feeding it have steadily pulled back since that time, leaving
a pool of water that measures 4 by 5 kilometers.

Disko Bay
Sixty-meter-high icebergs—formerly part of the Greenland Ice Sheet—
float into the North Atlantic Ocean, raising sea levels as they melt.

once upon
text by Ari Trausti Gudmundsson
In this extraordinary age of technological innovation,
it might seem strange to see a group of
glaciologists carrying out their research with little
more than a very long measuring tape—climbing
onto a glacier’s margin and stretching the tape
out between the ice wall and cairns in front of it.
Yet, each year, in October or November, when the
melting season is over, our team from Iceland’s
Glaciological Society takes to the field to monitor
the position of glacier snouts by measuring the
horizontal distance to them from fixed points on
firm ground. Simple as the technique may be, it is
46

a glacier
photographs by Ragnar Th. Sigurdsson
proving to be an effective tool in assessing the condition
and change in Iceland’s retreating glaciers.
During the past millennium, Icelandic glaciers and
ice caps have expanded and retreated. In the early
medieval period, they were substantially smaller
than they are today, while during the “Little Ice Age,”
starting in late medieval period, they reached their
S t e i n s h o l t s j ö k u l l
A team from Iceland’s Glaciological Society monitors glacier margin
positions with a simple measuring tape.
the explorers journal

maximum known size, which they maintained well
into the nineteenth century. During a warm period
from 1925 until 1965, they shrank rapidly, some
margins receding as much as four kilometers. The
glaciers began to grow again during a subsequent
cold spell, which lasted until around 1985. Almost
all glaciers advanced during those two decades,
some more rapidly than others. By 1995–1996,
however, it was clear that they had entered a steep
decline, evident in records from some 40 different
glacier position monitoring stations throughout the
island nation. While surging glaciers (periodic, very
fast advances) have upset this pattern, they tend to
quickly retreat after each surge.
One of the most active of these glaciers has been
the narrow Steinsholtsjökull (Stony Hill Glacier in
English), which retreated some 55 meters between
2005 and 2007. Steinsholtsjökull flows northward
from the 1,677-meter Eyjafjallajökull volcano, a hulking
mountain that towers above a thin, flat strip of
fertile land, dotted with farms and fringed by black,
sandy beaches in southern Iceland, not far from the
battering waves of the North Atlantic. Its multiple
ice masses descend as glaciers from an elevation
of some 1,200 meters to about 100 meters above
sea level. They help in draining the glacier system
48
of the cone-shaped volcano, which covers some 78
square kilometers. The volcano’s inland slopes rise
above a former deep fjord and a valley filled to the
brim by flood sediments from subglacial volcanic
eruptions and ice-dammed lakes, as well as river
sediments. Steinsholtsjökull itself forms a valley
glacier with a left-hand downstream bend and one
somewhat steep icefall about halfway toward the
upper head of the glacier.
The last volcanic eruption of Eyjafjallajökull
occurred in 1821–1823. However, the mountain
remains restless. On January 15, 1967, people in
rural areas near the volcano felt an earthquake,
heard a strong, rumbling noise and saw dark,
plume-shaped clouds rise from its northern slopes.
The rumble was caused when the mountainside
west of Steinsholtsjökull had collapsed. A gigantic
slice of rock, some 400 meters high, weighing
40 million tons, fell on the ice, to be blended with
water from the lagoon in front of the glacier as
the rockslide rushed forward, partly floating on
compressed air. The masses, now more like 100
million tons of rock debris, ice chunks, and water,
almost overflowed the rather low northern rims of
the valley and shot out of its mouth, across sediment
plains toward the river Markarfljót and the
The retreating Steinsholtsjökull plunges into a wild valley littered with moraine material and rockslide debris from the 1967 mountainside collapse.

agricultural district of Fljótshlíd. Luckily, it lacked
power and never reach across the plains. Instead,
most of the water flooded the river, leaving in its
wake a maze of boulders the size of small houses
interspersed with jumbled blocks of ice.
Today, the complex northern precipices of the
volcano form the southern valley slopes, set with
high, dark rock towers, deep gullies, and ravines.
Boulders of all sizes litter the valley floor between
patches of moss, lichen, and low willow bushes.
Numerous boulder and gravel cones—remains
from that catastrophic event in 1967—turn the walk
into a slow-motion slalom.
Nearby, the steeper and more heavily crevassed
Gígjökull (Crater Glacier) originates within the
2.5-kilometer-wide, breached top crater. It also
feeds a glacial lagoon behind a high terminal moraine.
While members of the Iceland Glaciological
Society in collaboration with the Hydrological
Department of the National Energy Authority have
been monitoring Gígjökull since the 1960s, we
have only monitored Steinsholtsjökull since 2005.
From observations of the two glaciers, however,
it is clear they behave differently, due in part to
one being far steeper than the other and draining
a smaller part of the glacier system. The steep,
fast-flowing, and thinner Gígjökull glacier retreats
very fast while the thicker, more massive neighbor
seems more resilient.
Glacier ice covered about 11 percent of
Iceland in 2000. Research tells us that ice caps
and glaciers currently loose 0.2 to 0.3 percent of
the ice volume per year. Forecast modeling suggests
they will shrink to about half their current
size by the end of the twenty-first century and the
largest ice caps may vanish within 200 to 300
years. Hydropower generated by Iceland’s glacial
waters currently supplies about 80 percent of the
country’s electrical energy. If the current climate
forecasts hold, this discharge will increase and
then diminish. This is one reason for the current
emphasis on increasing and developing geothermal
power exploitation in Iceland.
biography
A geophysicist, mountaineer, and Arctic traveler, Ari Trausti
Gudmundsson, FI’04, is a well-known author and TVpersonality
in Iceland. Award-winning photographer Ragnar
Th. Sigurdsson, FI’04, specializes in nature and industrial
photography (www.arctic-images.com).
the explorers journal

A n I n n e r
Pilgrimage
from extreme adventure to making
a difference in the world
kristen ulmer talks with Jim Clash
Kristen Ulmer has mellowed since wilder days when
she was deemed the one “most likely to die” on lists
of extreme skiers. And rightly so. Jumping 20-meter
cliffs and being the first woman to ski down Wyoming’s
4,197-meter Grand Teton was what motivated her. Now
42, Ulmer is still involved in athletics, but surprisingly
in a much more spiritual way. She runs a series called
“Ski to Live” at three Utah resorts, including Snowbird
(www.kristenulmer.com), where she combines the
aggression of athletics with Zen, all in an effort to
make the world a better place. Her programs, which
50
include morning yoga sessions and on-hill coaching,
focus on the mental and spiritual side of sports, while
evenings are spent engaging the “Big Mind” process,
whereby clients discover how they are a part of a bigger
collective consciousness of humankind. Ulmer also
runs Big Mind events in other sports such as racecar
driving and golf, and conducts business seminars.
Explorers Journal contributing editor Jim Clash sat
down with Ulmer after a recent presentation at The
Explorers Club, and discussed her about-face in life.
Here is what she had to say:
Photo by Mike Stoner

JC: How did insecurity and anger help propel you
to world-class athlete?
KU: Ask any pro who is self-aware and he or she
will tell you that what it takes to be a great athlete,
unquestionably, is childhood insecurities.
Take fear, for example. In my own life, I had a
terrible fear of being normal, of not being special,
of not being loveable. Fortunately someone
handed me a pair of skis, which allowed me to
find something I was really good at. The better I
got, the more people loved me, which I craved.
I discovered some gifts in the process. Being
able to jump an 18-meter cliff, land it, then rocket
away at 60 mph makes you feel pretty damn good
about yourself. The crazier things got, surprisingly,
the calmer I became. Then, I couldn’t believe how
well my mind worked under such circumstances.
It was a blast to have the ski industry give me a
ton of attention. Plus people wanted to pay money
and send me on trips—and on and on. Yet all I
was doing was expressing my demons, working
through fears—not of cliffs or of dying, but of not
being loved. Anger is also a great motivator in
skiing. Not anger directed at anything or anyone
in particular—although there’s plenty to be angry
about in the world—but anger channeled into action.
Direct it into a really aggressive, powerful
sport, and look out! Personally, I felt like a savage
animal ripping big, bloody hunks of meat off the
world and eating them, blood dripping down my
face, howling. God, it felt good. You don’t ski very
well when you’re feeling love or peace.
JC: Your ski descent of the Grand Teton is the stuff
of legend.
KU: When I first decided to ski the Grand, I hadn’t
realized that no woman had done it. We tried
the first time with [the late] climber Alex Lowe.
Apparently, no one at that time had ever skied the
Grand on a first attempt because once you get
up there and see what the skiing is about—holy
crap—it’s just ridiculous. It’s a mountain without a
bottom, so steep up top that one slip and you’re
dead. And it’s easy to slip.
We bagged our first attempt—for those reasons
and because the avalanche danger was so bad.
After that I could barely sleep, though, because I
knew I’d be going back. I spent a few weeks camping
and skiing first descents in Alaska. When we
went back a month later (Tom Jungst and I) with
two other friends, I was in a great frame of mind.
It was so dangerous, though. The skiing was
horrendous. On my third “turn” (really just traversejumping
on the snow, trying to get it to fracture),
the pack finally broke two to three feet deep and
I had to step up, above the avalanche, and shake
my lower leg out of it. Within seconds that slide
was rocketing 100 mph down, exploding off a
rock and disappearing over a 600-meter cliff.
The climb up and the rappel down
made the experience even crazier—a
300-meter ice climb, above a 300-meter
drop. We were belayed maybe half a pitch? I
think about that experience now, and it seems
like another world. Who was that person? My life
is so different.
JC: You were ranked the top women’s extreme free
skier for a dozen years, but you never competed in
the Olympics. Why not?
KU: There are no Olympics for free skiing. I was on
the U.S. Ski Team for moguls in the early 1990s,
but back then you had to be an amateur to compete
for the Olympics. Think about that—you either
needed rich parents, or had to work full-time and
compete against rich-parent athletes who can
train twice as much. It was a bogus system. I
slipped through the cracks within a season, and
started jumping off cliffs and heli-skiing instead,
where I could actually make money.
But the world was changing, and it worked out
great for me. Turns out the media didn’t care so
much about the U.S. team but found free-skiing
(then called “extreme” skiing) intoxicating. Funny
thing is though—besides regional mogul competition,
my stint on the U.S. team, two big mountain
contests, and one X Games skier cross event—I’ve
never competed in anything. All my “ranks” came
from reputation—people in the ski industry or
people reading magazines and watching ski films
saying I was a badass and voting for me.
I think I dominated for so long because, honestly,
I had no competition for ten years. I’d stick the
landings off 60-footers and the next-best woman
would crash on a 10-footer. I considered it an
insult to be called the best “women” big mountain
skier in the world. I wanted to kick the men’s butts,
and sometimes I did, sometimes not.
JC: You were in Warren Miller and Teton Gravity
Research flicks. Give me some moments that look
different on-camera versus what it was like filming.
the explorers journal

KU: I’ve been in five avalanches, three caught on film.
They look like nothing there, but were pure insanity.
In two, I went from 10 to 60 mph in an instant.
The other things that look like nothing on film, but
feel like being in a blender, are cliff drops. I was
known in the early days for huge jumps. I remember
a few before the film came out, that I would hash
over in my mind, thinking, “Wow, wow, wow, they
were so crazy.” And when the film did come out,
people watching sure enough went, “oooh,” but to
me the jumps looked
small compared to
how my mind remembered
them.
Pro skiers make
big jumps look easy
and, with so many
people doing them
now, the audience
begins to glaze over
about the athleticism
involved. It’s a bitch
to land a 60-footer,
no matter how steep
the landing or how
deep the powder. It
can feel like nothing
or like you’ve run into
a brick wall.
JC: You were regularly
on lists of “most
likely to die” for years.
What moments were
scariest and how did
you deal with them?
KU: Those were
unofficial lists that
“extreme” athletes
made up in bars. But
I suppose I deserved
the reputation. Once I was cartwheeling toward
a bottomless crevasse at 50 mph and pulled up
three meters shy in a burst of adrenaline and an
internal scream of “Nooooo!” I’ve also watched
avalanches roar toward me, ducking and holding
my breath while they pounded my back.
But I don’t consider it a true near-death experience
unless you give up. If you go limp and prepare
to die, then you are facing death.
I only had one of those, a fall while rock climbing.
52
I fell so far I thought my protection had pulled out
and I was headed toward the ground 50 meters
away. There was nothing I could do, so I went limp
and emitted this weird guttural moan. I bounced
off a few cliffs, then was caught by my belayer—my
boyfriend at the time—who had left a coil of rope at
his feet thinking there was no way I’d fall because
it was such an easy pitch.
I couldn’t speak for an hour afterward. All I did
was shake and cry. I thought my hip and ribs were
broken, and I had
a bunch of chunks
missing from my left
side. So my partner
gave me a muscle
relaxant, and the
searing pain went
away and oddly
never returned. We
finished the route,
even though it was a
10-pitch overnighter.
We spent the night
on the wall instead
of getting me what
should have been 30
stitches. I have some
cool scars to show
for that one.
JC: I heard Playboy
wanted you to pose.
Why didn’t you?
KU: I would have, and
proudly so. I think
I have a beautiful
body, plus it would
be a great way to
explore my feminine
role in society. But
I didn’t because
when they asked me I was 31, and by age 33 it
still hadn’t happened. I finally wrote (but didn’t
pose in) an article for Maxim on beautiful women
“extreme” athletes. I think Playboy was put off by
that, and they stopped calling.
JC: You’re 42 now. Anyone special in your life? Do
you think about having children?
KU: There is someone, but I don’t want to have
children. I gave it a lot of thought before deciding.
Kristen Ulmer once did flips for ski flicks; today she helps clients flip their ways of thinking. Photo by Hank de Vre

It seems everyone wants to share their gifts with
the world, and women want to nurture, but this
work satisfies both needs. If I had a kid, it would
be at the expense of my work, which I believe so
deeply affects people’s lives and my own that I
don’t dare stop. “Ski To Live” and the private work
with individuals and groups are my children.
JC: Tell us about those “children.”
KU: Hopefully anyone reading this will see a trend.
I do not miss my ski career. It was a heck of a
way to work through my issues and I love being
quizzed about it and reminiscing, but I stayed at
least six years past enjoying it. So, in that was
the start of “Ski To Live,” which led to the work
I’m doing now. I started “Ski To Live” because it
was the clinic I wanted to attend. Funny thing, I
don’t even remember deciding to do any of this;
it’s like the clinics were a virus and I was the host.
The first one was psychological, not spiritual, and
it was a little too woo-woo and new agey. Then I
met Zen Master Genpo Roshi. The first hour of the
first clinic we did together taught me more about
choices, and how skiing had affected my life more
than my entire 14-year career had. The clinics, I
realize now, are the reason I became a pro skier in
the first place—to bring them to the world. The thrill
of being a Zen coach for athletes and adventurers
is so much greater than that of being a pro skier.
JC: What’s next?
KU: To constantly re-create “Ski To Live,” which is
different every time. I’ve been teaching Zen through
other sports: golf, racecar driving, tennis, cycling—
even flying-trapeze—for professional and recreational
athletes. I’m also asked to facilitate private
“Big Mind” sessions for individuals and companies.
My hope is to bring Roshi’s “Big Mind” experience
to everyone, through many means, in so doing
helping raise the consciousness of humankind—
help people access who and what they are, and
fundamentally show them why it’s important to be
a little nicer to each other. That’s the new American
dream, isn’t it, to make a living doing something
you love and believe in? My passion is to make the
human experience more graspable. That’s a bigger
adrenaline rush than all the skiing in the world. In 50
years we may not even be able to ski with climate
change, so my hope is we’ll find passion in each
other and in just being awake. I want to play some
small role in that.
JC: You say, “My life is so different now.”
KU: I was such a moron as a pro skier—I felt like life
was a movie and I was the star. It seemed necessary
to be that way to accomplish what I did. But
the radical shift from that type of consciousness, or
rather unconsciousness, is magical. Sure I still have
an ego; always have, always will. But now I see the
world—glimpses all the time—from a different consciousness
than my own egotistic perspective—just
enough so that each day has at least one magic
moment when I’m working. It’s like I’m observing
something extraordinary. And to have friends to do
this with is fantastic. We’re on such a wild adventure
together—a far bigger exploration than any trip
I’ve been on, or any sport I’ve mastered.
JC: What does the Big Mind concept ask followers
to embrace?
KU: That’s the thing—it doesn’t ask people to embrace
anything except their wisdom, which they
discover on their own. It’s simply a teaching technique
that uses interactive dialogue. It’s the job
of the facilitator (me, in this case) and the client
to decide what kind of journey to go on together.
You want to find what the “zone” in athletics is?
Let’s dive in. You want to experience authenticity?
Okay, but the truth may be different from you think.
You want to know what’s holding you back? Here
we go. You want to explore the meaning of life?
Let’s spend a day with that one.
JC: How about the link from “Ski to Live” to caring
more about the planet with Big Mind?
KU: In my ski career, I cared about myself and my
own life—it’s all most of us know, of course. In
Big Mind speak, I’d say I lived mostly the voice of
“self expression,” immensely useful for sports and
a great way to live. Now there’s something more.
It’s not so much caring about the planet—even with
climate change the planet will be fine—it’s humans
doing bad things to themselves. I care about personally
waking up in this lifetime, and I also care
about helping people in their desire to wake up. It’s
so interesting to do this through sports. Little else
swells the heart like sports. Jump on a bike and
your mental chalkboard simply gets erased. Sports
bring us to our knees like little else does. This work
brings me to my knees.
For more of Jim Clash’s columns and videos, go to
www.forbes.com/tothelimits
the explorers journal

Extreme medicine
your heatlh and safety in the field
avalanche!
surviving snow burial
As explorers, many of us welcome winter and
its associated seasonal outdoor activities—
skiing, snowboarding, and backcountry hiking.
And, most of us dress accordingly, taking
necessary precautions to avoid hypothermia
by Michael J. Manyak, M.D., FACS
and frostbite. But few of us give any thought to
preparing for one of winter’s most spectacular
disasters—avalanche!
Although avalanche is perceived as a rare
occurrence, and death from it rarer still, there
Avalanche on Chatpah, Pakistan. Photo by Faith Harckham, Luxtreks
54

were 752 avalanches involving 1,504 people in
Switzerland alone over the past 11 years. The
median annual mortality rate from avalanche in
Europe and North America between 1994 and
2003 was 141, according to the International
Commission for Mountain Emergency Medicine.
Research by the Austrian Mountain Rescue
Service has shown that about 18 percent of
people rescued after total burial survive to hospital
discharge. The Swiss Avalanche Research
Center data revealed a greater than 90 percent
chance of survival if buried less than 15
minutes but a less than 30 percent chance of
survival if buried for 45 minutes. Studies have
also shown that probability of survival is highest
with visual localization and lowest for those
located by avalanche transceiver, while there
appears to be no survival difference between
those found by rescue dogs and those located
with avalanche probes. However, use of an avalanche
transceiver reduced the time of burial
and the mortality of those having such devices
compared to those without them. Although
there are some regional variances, it appears
that death occurs overwhelmingly by asphyxiation,
with less than 10 percent attributed to
trauma and virtually none by hypothermia.
So what does one do to reduce the risk of
death from avalanche? According to Knox
Williams, director of the Colorado Avalanche
Information Center, the first key is to have
terrain knowledge before heading out into
the field. High risk is encountered with slope
gradients of 30 to 45 degrees, convex slope
contour, north-facing slopes in winter, and
south-facing slopes in spring, and smooth
slopes without much ground cover. One
should look for evidence of recent avalanches
or old slide paths, sure signs of danger. Snow
conditions are obviously important. Loose, dry
snow, especially with small crystals, is far more
likely to avalanche. Smooth surfaces such as
those with a crust and loose, noncompacted
underlying snow are equally dangerous. A
rate of snow fall one inch or greater per hour
increases avalanche danger rapidly. Beware of
winds 15 mph or more and rapid temperature
change; both cause significant instability.
When you find yourself in a potential avalanche
situation, stay high and try to travel on ridge tops
or, alternatively, in a valley away from the slope
bottom. Spend the shortest time possible on the
open slopes and take advantage of rocky outcrops
or dense timber. Go straight up or down a
dangerous slope, do not traverse. Snowmobiles
must stay away from lower parts of slopes and
long, open slope areas and certainly resist the
desire to ride up steep hills. On a dangerous
slope, reduce risk by having only one person at a
time in the risky area.
If caught in an avalanche, keeping a clear
head is essential but nearly impossible.
Abandon all equipment, including snowmobiles,
and seek shelter behind rocks, trees, or
vehicles. Brace for impact, crouch low, turn
away from the onrushing snow, and cover your
mouth and nose. As the avalanche slows, pull
your arms and hands toward your face to create
space. Thrust and kick toward the surface
and try to work toward the edge of the snowslide.
If trapped in a vehicle, turn off the engine
and do not abandon it unless certain of your
safety. If you are the survivor, stay with those
still trapped; time is essential and you are the
one most likely to rescue others. However, if
help is only a few minutes away, mark the route
for the returning search party. There is real
danger to rescuers and survivors alike from
another snowslide.
Equipment developed to aid those in potential
avalanche situations includes portable
avalanche airbags and avalanche transceivers.
The airbag pack weighs roughly 3 kg and
deploys easily. The downside is that the cost
is around $1,000 but that approximates the
cost of good skis. When deployed, the airbag
protects against trauma, acts as a flotation
device to keep the victim on the surface, and
is in sharp color contrast to the snow for localization.
Transceivers transmit at 457 kHz by
manufacturer agreement. They weigh roughly 3
oz, run on one AA battery, have a range of 40
meters, and cost between $200 and $500. The
large study by the International Commission for
Mountain Emergency Medicine revealed that
people equipped with an avalanche airbag had
lower mortality (3 percent vs 19 percent) than
those without it. Lower median duration of burial
(25 minutes vs 125 minutes) and mortality (55
percent vs 70.6 percent) were noted in those
using an avalanche transceiver compared to
those not using the device.
the explorers journal

Extreme Cuisine
food for the epicurean adventurer
Elegant Lasagna
by Linda Frederick Yaffe
…in the woods, eating is what counts most in life.”
—Norman Maclean, USFS 1919
The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky, 1976
Everyone loves lasagna: it is flavorful, warming—and
filling. Baked lasagna dishes are
perfect for cold weather adventures. At home,
make the sauce, assemble the casserole using
laborsaving uncooked oven-ready noodles,
and bake. Dehydration is easy too. Coarsely
break up the lasagna noodles with a spatula,
spread the cooked casserole on covered
dehydrator trays, and dry until the sauce is
powdery and the noodles are firm and crisp. In
the outback, simply place the dried food in a
pot, barely cover it with water, bring to a boil,
stir, and enjoy a hot gourmet meal.
Chicken Marsala
Lasagna
serves 4: Weight, one dried serving=6 ounces
1. To make the sauce, heat 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil in
a Dutch oven or large skillet over medium heat. Add:
• 1 small onion, minced
• 6 fresh mushrooms, diced
• ¾ lb ground pork, beef, or soy sausage, crumbled
2. stir in and cook for 5 minutes:
• ¾ lb chicken tenders, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
3. Stir in and bring to a boil:
• ½ cup dry Marsala wine
• 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes
• 1 cup chicken broth
• ½ teaspoon honey
• teaspoon ground cinnamon
4. Reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes. Set aside.
56

5. Preheat oven to 350ºF. Oil a 10 x 13-inch casserole dish. Have ready:
• 9 sheets uncooked oven-ready lasagna noodles
6. Finely grate:
• ¾ cup Parmesan cheese
• 1 cup mozzarella cheese
7. Layer the ingredients in the casserole dish in the following order: ¼
of the sauce, 3 sheets of noodles, of the grated mozzarella, and
of the grated Parmesan. Repeat, using all the ingredients and topping
the casserole with the last ¼ of the sauce.
8. Cover and bake for 30 minutes, uncover, and bake 10 minutes
longer.
9. Use a spatula to break up the noodles; spread on covered
dehydrator trays. Dehydrate for 5½ hours at 145ºF.
10. To rehydrate, cover with water just above level of food in
pot. boil, stir, and serve.
Roasted Vegetable
Lasagna
serves 4: Weight, one dried serving=7 ounces
1. Preheat oven to 350ºF. Coarsely chop and place on a large
rimmed baking sheet or in a large roasting pan:
• 1 large onion
• 10 crimini mushrooms
• 1 large eggplant
• 1 red bell pepper
• 2 medium zucchini
2. Sprinkle over the vegetables and stir thoroughly to coat:
• 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• ½ teaspoon coarse salt
• ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3. Place in oven for 30 minutes. Remove from oven, stir
well, then return to oven for 30 minutes longer, or until
vegetables are evenly browned. Stir in:
• 1 teaspoon fresh minced thyme or ½ teaspoon dried
4. Preheat oven to 350ºF. Oil a 10 x 13-inch casserole dish. Have ready:
• 5½ cups spaghetti sauce
• 9 sheets uncooked oven-ready lasagna noodles
• 1 pound ricotta cheese
• 8 ounces Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, finely grated
5. Layer the ingredients in the casserole dish in the
following order: ¼ of the spaghetti sauce, 3 sheets of
noodles, of the roasted vegetables, of the ricotta
cheese, and of the Parmesan cheese. Repeat, using all
the ingredients and topping the casserole with the last ¼
of the spaghetti sauce.
6. Cover and bake for 30 minutes, uncover, and bake 10 minutes
longer.
7. Use a spatula to break up the noodles; spread on covered
dehydrator trays. Dehydrate for 5½ hours at 145ºF.
8. To rehydrate, cover with water just above level of food in
pot. boil, stir, and serve.
Biography
A California-based writer, Linda Frederick Yaffe is the
author of Backpack Gourmet, High Trail Cookery, and the
recently released Solar Cooking for Home and Camp.

eviews
edited by Milbry C. Polk
288 pp • Cambridge, England: The
Scott Polar Research Institute
and Polarworld, 2008 • ISBN-10:
0901021083, ISBN-13: 978-0901021083•
£40 (hardcover) £25 (softbound) •
Reviewed by Nick Smith
Face to Face
One of the most stunning books
of polar photography in recent
times has just been published
by Polarworld. Face to Face:
Polar Portraits is made up of a
sequence of historical portraits
by Huw Lewis-Jones
taken from the Scott Polar
Research Institute archive,
alternating with contemporary
portraiture by award-winning
British photographer Martin
Hartley. With 17 polar expeditions
under his belt, Hartley
“more than most knows what
it takes to be out in the wilderness,”
so says Ranulph
Fiennes in his foreword to the
book. According to Hartley,
the classic portraits, taken by
such master photographers
as Frank Hurley and Herbert
Ponting, show how hard it was
a century ago. “They were out
on the ice for so long,” says
Hartley, “and it was really tough
for them. There was no contact
with home, their gear wasn’t
so great and their diet was no
good.” He thinks the hardship
is revealed in their eyes: “there
are some real thousand-yard
stares in those old photos.”
Hartley’s portraiture is a
lesson in just how far we have
come as explorers. His pictures
tell the story of super-fit ice
athletes clad in smart textiles
and high-tech eyewear, geared
up for much shorter higherintensity
dashes on the ice. His
off-ice portraits are, in terms of
photographic reportage, about
as good as it gets, with Børge
Ousland resplendent in a threepiece
suit, an unconventional
profile of a smoking Anatoly
Omelchenko wielding a welding
torch and a training shot of
Rosie Stancer. They provide a
perfect artistic counterbalance
to the well-known iconography
of the past. Hurley’s extraordinary
shot of Tom Crean, pipe
clenched between his teeth,
and Ponting’s monumental
1912 portraits of Apsley
Cherry-Garrard and Cecil
Meares are works of genius.
In contrast to the century-old
daguerreotypes, magic lantern
slides, and glass plate negatives,
most of Hartley’s photographs
are shot on medium
58

format transparency film, taken
with his battered old Mamiya
645 Pro-TL (now on display
at the Scott Polar Research
Institute). Despite the huge
technological advances in
photographic equipment made
over the past century, shooting
film in temperatures as low
as -30ºC brings its own challenges.
Film can freeze and it
will snap if you don’t wind on
manually. Perhaps it was inevitable
that Hartley made the
move to digital, using a Nikon
D2X for a handful of these
shots. But the digital pictures
are different and maybe they
lack some of the magic of film.
“Sometimes in low light, you’ve
got to use digital,” says Hartley,
referring to a recent shot of Ben
Saunders taken at Resolute
Bay. So what’s better, digital or
film? “You can’t compare. How
do you compare red wine with
white wine?”
The portraits are complemented
by terrific essays from
Huw Lewis-Jones and Hugh
Brody, offering insights on
the state of photography in
the pioneering days of polar
exploration, as well as how we
photograph expeditions in the
modern world. The images are
thoughtfully edited, dovetailing
polar heritage with today’s icy
adventures that are so different
in character and “wrapped up
in media coverage.” To order:
www.polarfacebook.com
An exhibition of images from
Face to Face
will be on view at
the Explorers Club in New York
January 14-31, 2009
REVIEWS
One Thousand
Languages: Living,
Endangered, and Lost
by Peter K. Austin
288 pp • University of California
Press; 2008 • ISBN-10: 0520255607,
ISBN-13: 978-0520255609 • $29.95
Every language embodies an
encyclopedia of knowledge
that was garnered over untold
generations and relates to the
environment, its own particular
cultural evolvement, lore, philosophy,
and approach to life.
When a language dies with
its last speaker, we all lose a
unique slice human experience
that evolved over time.
In One Thousand Languages:
Living, Endangered, and Lost,
Peter K. Austin, director of
the Endangered Languages
Academic Program at the
School of Oriental and African
Studies in London, tells us that
half of the 6,900 languages
spoken today have fewer than
10,000 speakers—some only
two—and these will likely disappear
in the coming decades.
Austin provides an excellent
overview of the diversity
of human verbal expression.
He succinctly lists unique
characteristics of languages
from those with the most
speakers—1,055 million for
Mandarin—to those found in regions
such as the Pacific where
more than 1,300 languages
are spoken by an average of
800 individuals each. To this
he adds fascinating linguistic
facts, for example, that Vanuatu
has the greatest language
diversity with 120 languages
spoken by a total population
of just 100,000. A regional
map and a brief grammar on
how to count to ten and write
a few characters or phrases
accompanies each section.
In his discussion of Cree, an
Algonquin language spoken
by some 80,000 people scattered
over a vast area of the
northern United States and
Canada, we learn a smattering
of four Cree dialects, how both
French and Scots influenced
the evolution of Cree, and that
the alphabet used to record
the language was created by
James Evans, a missionary,
in 1840. In his final section,
Austin offers a brief overview
of extinct languages, hinting at
the magnitude of cultural loss.
Imagine having a conversation
with an Acadian and learning
about their worldview!
This book is an excellent resource
on language and a great
companion to Wade Davis’
lyrical exploration of dying
languages, Light at the Edge
of the World, reviewed previously
in this magazine. Each
language is a treasure chest
brimming with knowledge. We
should all listen to and learn
from the thousands of voices
that still speak to the immensity
of human experience.
the explorers journal

The Prize of the Pole
60
a film by Staffan Julén
78 minutes • New York: First Run/
Icarus Films, 2006 • Price upon request
• Reviewed by Carl G. Schuster
Robert E. Peary’s late nineteenth-
and early twentiethcentury
expeditions in pursuit
of the North Pole are recounted
by the Inuit hunter, Hivshu,
a.k.a. Robert E. Peary II and
the explorer’s great grandson,
in this documentary film. In his
narrative, Hivshu includes the
troubling story of the boy Minik,
one of six Inuit brought to The
American Museum of Natural
History as anthropological
specimens by Peary and the
only one to survive, as well as
episodes from the history of
his own family from the time
of their first encounter with the
explorer.
The sweep of this film is
prodigious, covering not only
the grand panorama of global
exploration at the height of the
colonial era, but traces the rapidly
evolving notions of proper
anthropological study. In addition
to interviews with Peary’s
Inuit descendents, commentary
REVIEWS
on the accomplishments of
Peary, the third president of The
Explorers Club, and many other
players, including fellow member
Franz Boas, are brought to
life through the contemporary
perspective of the American
Museum’s David Hurst Thomas
and John Flint (MED’73), who
knows whereof he speaks,
with respect to Greenland and
Arctic navigation.
The museological and anthropological
communities come
off a good deal worse for wear
in the film, and their vaunted
cultural sensitivity is left largely
in tatters. It was, however unpleasant,
the reality of the age.
For those with a passion for the
Arctic, The Prize of the Pole—
which took Best Expedition
Film at the 2008 Explorers Club
Film Festival—is a must-see.
H u b b l e : I m a g i n g S p a c e
a n d T i m e
by David Devorkin & Robert Smith
224 pp • Washington: National
Geographic, 2008 • ISBN-10: 1426203225,
ISBN-13: 978-1426203220 • $50
One of the supreme exploration
ventures of the past decades
has been the revelation of
deep space made possible by
the Hubble telescope. A great
scientific feat of the twentieth
century, embodying outstanding
applications of human
creativity and curiosity, Hubble
was launched into space by the
space shuttle Discovery in April
1990. A fantastically complex,
yet fragile giant eye that endlessly
circles the Earth staring
into the universe, Hubble has
allowed us to see deep into
the past to understand beyond
conjecture and theory what it is
really like out beyond Earth.
In their new book Hubble:
Imaging Space and Time,
David Devorkin, curator for
history and astronomy and
the space sciences at the
Smithsonian National Air and
Space Museum, and Robert
Smith, a scholar of the Hubble,
have assembled 200 out
of the thousands of images
taken by Hubble that convey
the magnitude and mystery
of the universe and that have
been pivotal for astronomers
attempting to understand its
origins. Hubble has recorded
the birth and death of stars, the
merging of galaxies, the presence
of black holes.
As the abilities to penetrate
the vastness improve, possibly
with the second-generation
telescope, the James Webb
telescope, which is slated for
launch into orbit in a few years,
we will be able to see back in
the distance to the very birth of
the universe. The book, which
tells the story of the building of
the Hubble, its launch, essential
repairs in space, threats to
its mission, and what lies in the
future, brings our “eye in space”
and the indescribable beauty
of the universe to everyone.

T H E E X P L O R E R S C L U B c h a p t e r c h a i r s
46 east 70th street, New York, NY 10021 I 212-628-8383 I www.explorers.org
National chapter chairs
interNational chapter chairs
Alaska
John J. Kelley, Ph.D.
Tel: 907-479-5989
Fax: 907-479-5990
ffjjk@uaf.edu
Atlanta
Roy Alexander Wallace
Tel: 404-237-5098
Fax: 404-231-5228
awallace3@bellsouth.net
Central Florida
G. Michael Harris
Tel: 727-584-2883
Fax: 727-585-6078
gmh@tampabay.rr.com
Chicago/Great Lakes
Mel Surdel
Contact person:
Cheryl Istvan
Tel: 312-640-0741
Fax: 312-640-0731
ssn578688@aol.com
George Rogers Clark
Joseph E. Ricketts
Tel/Fax: 937-885-2477
jer937@aol.com
Greater Piedmont
Nena Powell Rice
Tel: 803-777-8170
Fax: 803-254-1338
nrice@sc.edu
Jupiter Florida
Rosemarie Twinam
Tel: 772-219-1970
Fax: 772-283-3497
RTwinam@aol.com
Pacific Northwest
Matthew Stubbs
Tel: 206-774-1655
matthew_stubbs@comcast.net
Philadelphia
Doug Soroka
Tel: 215-257-4588
dsoroka@errc.ars.usda.gov
Rocky Mountain
William F. Schoeberlein
Tel: 303-526-0505
Fax: 303-526-5171
billschoeberlein@comcast.net
San Diego
Capt. Robert “Rio” Hahn
Tel: 760-723-2318
Fax: 760-723-3326
rio@adventure.org
Southern California
David A. Dolan, FRGS
Tel. 949-307-9182
daviddolan@aol.com
Southern Florida
Pamela L. Stephany
954-568-5938
pamstephany@aol.com
Southwest
Brian Hanson (Chapter Liaison)
Tel: 512-266-7851
brianphanson@sbcglobal.net
Southwest Florida
Col. Gerry W. Bass
Tel: 239-594-5224
gerrywb@embarqmail.com
Argentina
Hugo Castello, Ph.D.
Fax: 54 11 4 982 5243/4494
hucastel@mail.retina.ar
Australia-New Zealand
Ann McFarlane, Ph.D.
Tel: 61-2-9328-4883
Fax: 61-2-9328-4888
amcfarlane@bigpond.com
Canadian
Joseph G. Frey
Tel: 416-239-8840
explorersclubcanada@hotmail.com
www.explorersclub.ca
East Asia
Dr. Michael J. Moser
mmoser@omm.com
Great Britain
Barry L. Moss
Tel: 44 020 8992 7178
barola2780@aol.com
Iceland
Haraldur Örn Ólafsson
Tel: +354 545 8551
Fax: +354 562 1289
haraldur.orn.olafsson@ivr.stjr.is
India
Avinash Kohli
amber@nda.vsnl.net.in
Norway
Hans-Erik Hansen
Home Tel: 47 22-458-205
Work Tel: 47 67-138-559
hans-e-h@online.no
New England
Gregory Deyermenjian
Tel: 978-927-8827, ext. 128
Fax: 978-927-9182
paititi@alumni.clarku.edu
North Pacific Alaska
Mead Treadwell
Tel: 907-258-7764
Fax: 907-258-7768
meadwell@alaska.net
Northern California
Lee Langan
Tel: 415-931-3015
Fax: 415-398-7664
lee@langan.net
St. Louis
Mabel Purkerson, M.D.
Tel: 314-362-4234
purkerm@msnotes.wustl.edu
Texas
Ted D. Lee
Tel: 210-886-9500
Fax: 210-886-9883
tedlee@gunn-lee.com
Washington, DC
Dr. Lee Talbot
Tel: 703-734-8576
Fax: 703-734-8576
ltalbot@gmu.edu
Poland
Marek Kaminski
Home Tel: 48-69-5664000
Work Tel: 48-58-5544522
Fax: 48-58-5523315
mkaminski@gamasan.pl
m.rogozinska@rp.pl
Russia
Alexander Borodin
Tel: 7-095-973-2415
Alexanderb@sibneft.ru
Western Europe
Lorie Karnath
Tel: 49-1723-95-2051
lkarnath@yahoo.com

The Third Man Factor
62
by John Geiger
288 pp • New York: Weinstein Books,
2009 • ISBN-13: 978-0-14-301751-6 • $24
Imagine the utter helplessness
of Lyn and Dougal
Robertson when, hundreds of
kilometers from land, with four
young people in their care,
whales stove in their yacht; or
the panic that overwhelmed
Stephanie Schwabe when
deep underwater in a cave, she
realized she had only minutes
of oxygen left and she could
not find the line that would lead
her out of maze of tunnels; or
the sheer terror faced by Ron
DiFrancesco when he realized
his only chance of surviving
the burning South Tower of the
World Trade Center on 9/11
was to plunge into choking
smoke and flames. That they all
survived is amazing but what is
more so is that they all attribute
their survival to a guiding spiritual
presence.
John Geiger’s riveting new
book, The Third Man Factor,
details these and other accounts
in which survivors credit
an imagined being, a spiritual
presence that T.S. Eliot referred
to as the “Third Man” in his
poem, The Wasteland. Geiger
posits a range of possible explanations
from extreme stress
and lack of oxygen to, surprisingly,
monotony. However, it is
his discussion of right side-left
side brain disturbances and
interactions, and how resulting
events are interpreted historically
that is truly revelatory and
makes this an important book.
Humans, he concludes, have
an overwhelming will to survive
that comes from within. That we
all have the personal power to
overcome the barriers, survive,
and, in fact, improve ourselves
as a result, he argues, is the real
hope for the future of humanity.
The Hidden Treasures
of Timbuktu
by John Hunwick & Alida Jay Boye
photographs by Joseph Hunwick
176 pp • New York: Thames & Hudson,
2008 • ISBN-10: 0500514216, ISBN-13: 978-
0500514214 • $50
REVIEWS
Sited on a bend in the Niger
River in present-day Mali, the
Kingdom of Timbuktu was the
long-time destination of caravans
crossing the Sahara to
trade in salt, gold, slaves, and
luxury goods. In past centuries,
the fabled mudbrick city and
the legends it inspired lured
hearty European explorers,
many of whom lost their lives
in crossing the great sand sea.
The true wealth of Timbuktu,
however, was not its gold and
luxury goods but its intellectual
capital and literary holdings—
what has been long known by
Islamic scholars is only now
making a considerable splash
in the West and reshaping the
history of Africa. From the fourteenth
century on, Timbuktu
was a major destination for
scholars seeking the city’s
considerable libraries, which
housed treatises on legal and
religious matters as well as
copies of great works of Greek
and Roman literature and philosophy,
lost in the West.
It is hard to believe that the
extent of the libraries’ collections
is only now being recognized.
In recent centuries, the
Timbuktu region has suffered
economic and political turmoil
and natural disasters, which
took their toll on the libraries;
many manuscripts literally have
been found buried in the sand.
Now, thanks to the dedication
of scholars, the libraries are
being brought back to life and
studied. This wonderful story
has been told in The Hidden
Treasures of Timbuktu, by
John Hunwick, a scholar of
Islamic Africa and leader in
the restoration of the libraries,
and Alida Jay Boye, cofounder
and coordinator of the
University of Oslo’s Timbuktu
Manuscripts Project.

THE EXPLORERS CLUB LEGACY SOCIETY
Thank you for your support!
as long as there is
The Explorers Club
your name will be listed as a member of
The Legacy Society
Robert J. Atwater
Capt. Norman L. Baker
Barbara Ballard
Robert D. Ballard, Ph.D.
Samuel B. Ballen
Mark Gregory Bayuk
Daniel A. Bennett
Josh Bernstein
John R. Bockstoce, D.Phil.
Bjorn G. Bolstad
Capt. Bruce M. Bongar, Ph.D.
Garrett R. Bowden
Harry Davis Brooks
Lt. Col. Jewell Richard Browder*
August “Augie” Brown
John C.D. Bruno
Lee R. Bynum*
Virginia Castagnola Hunter
Julianne M. Chase, Ph.D.
Maj. Gen. Arthur W. Clark, USAF
(Ret.)
Leslie E. Colby
Jonathan M. Conrad
Catherine Nixon Cooke
Constance Difede
Mr. & Mrs. James Donovan
Col. William H. Dribben, USA (Ret.)
Sylvia A. Earle, Ph.D.
Lee M. Elman
Michael L. Finn
Robert L. Fisher, Ph.D.
John W. Flint
Kay Foster
James M. Fowler
W. Roger Fry
Alfred C. Glassell, Jr.
George W. Gowen
Randall A. Greene
Jean Charles Michel Guite
Capt. Robert “Rio” Hahn
Allan C. Hamilton
Scott W. Hamilton
O. Winston “Bud” Hampton, Ph.D.
Brian P. Hanson
James H. Hardy, M.D.
Judith Heath
Robert A. Hemm
Gary “Doc” Hermalyn, Ph.D.
Lotsie Hermann Holton
Charles B. Huestis
Robert Edgar Hyman
J.P. Morgan Charitable Trust
Robert M. Jackson, M.D.
Kenneth M. Kamler, M.D.
Prince Joli Kansil
Lorie M.L. Karnath
Anthony G. Kehle, III
Anne B. Keiser
Kathryn Kiplinger
Thomas R. Kuhns, M.D.
Hannah B. Kurzweil
Carl C. Landegger
Michael S. Levin
Florence Lewisohn Trust
J. Roland Lieber
Michael Luzich
James E. Lockwood, Jr.*
Jose Loeb
John H. Loret, Ph.D., D.Sc.
Margaret D. Lowman, Ph.D.
Robert H. Malott
Leslie Mandel
Robert E. McCarthy*
George E. McCown
Capt. Alfred S. McLaren, Ph.D., USN
(Ret.)
Lorus T. Milne, Ph.D.
James M. Mitchelhill*
Arnold H. Neis
Walter P. Noonan
Martin T. Nweeia, D.D.S.
Dr. John W. Olsen
Kathleen Parker
Alese & Morton Pechter
William E. Phillips
Prof Mabel L. Purkerson, M.D.
Roland R. Puton
Dimitri Rebikoff*
John T. Reilly, Ph.D.
Adrian Richards, Ph.D.
Bruce E. Rippeteau, Ph.D.
Merle Greene Robertson, Ph.D.
Otto E. Roethenmund
James Beeland Rogers, Jr.
Rudy L. Ruggles, Jr.
Gene M. Rurka
Avery B. Russell
David J. Saul, Ph.D.
Willets H. Sawyer, III
A. Harvey Schreter*
Mr. & Mrs. Donald Segur
Theodore M. Siouris
William J. L. Sladen, M.D., D.Phil.
Susan Deborah Smilow
Sally A. Spencer
Pamela L. Stephany
Ronnie & Allan Streichler
Arthur O. Sulzberger
Vernon F. Taylor, III
Mitchell Terk, M.D.
C. Frederick Thompson, II
James “Buddy” Thompson
Marc Verstraete Van de Weyer
Robert C. Vaughn
Ann Marks Volkwein
Leonard A. Weakley, Jr.
William G. Wellington, Ph.D.
Robert H. Whitby
Julius Wile*
Holly Williams
Francis A. Wodal*
* Deceased
for information and to join us:
The Explorers Club
46 East 70th Street
New York, NY 10021
212-628-8383
www.explorers.org
the explorers journal

WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?
great moments in exploration as told to Jim Clash
Faster than Thunder
with Chuck Yeager
On Oct. 14, 1947, USAF test pilot Chuck Yeager flew his
Bell X-1 aircraft at Mach 1.07, becoming the first man to
break the sound barrier in level flight. The feat allowed
for development of much faster rockets, which eventually
put man into space and on the moon. Yeager, 85 and
a retired Major General, says it was duty to his country
that drove him, but courage also comes to mind.
JC: How did you get interested in flying?
CY: I didn’t see an airplane until I was 18. West
Virginia had no airports. In 1941, I enlisted in the
military, as many of us did. I was a gifted mechanic
and went to work on planes. But I noticed
while my hands were always greasy, the pilots’
were clean—and they had good-looking girls on
their arms. Flying looked pretty good to me, but
I only had a high-school diploma and the military
wanted college. In 1942, when they weren’t
getting enough applicants for the cadet flier program,
they dropped the college requirement so
I joined. With my visual acuity and understanding
of mechanics, I had an edge. I flew P-51
Mustangs and shot down a lot of planes.
JC: Take me back to 1947, after the war, as you
readied for your Mach 1 flight.
CY: We didn’t know we could break the sound
barrier, but it was our duty to try. You just didn’t
get in the airplane and go. We worked up to it
gradually, with nine powered flights. At Mach
0.94 there was a lot of shock wave turbulence,
and we lost use of the elevators. But we also
found that by having a moveable horizontal stabilizer,
we could control the plane above 0.94.
We learned you needed a slab tail to do it, and
that quantum leap kept us five years ahead of the
French, British, and Soviet Union.
JC: Your feelings flying faster than thunder?
CY: The needle jumped off the scale, past Mach
1, and I was almost disappointed that the damn
thing didn’t blow up.
JC: Did you experience fear?
CY: No, you’re wasting your time. It’s like religious
people say, “When you get into trouble in an airplane,
do you pray to God?” God can’t help me;
I’ve got to help myself. Sometimes you think you’re
going to die. But you never give up.
More of Jim Clash’s columns and video shows can be found
at www.forbes.com/tothelimits
64

the explorers journal
The official quarterly of
The Explorers Club since 1921
http://www.explorers.org
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From vast ocean depths to
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The Explorers Journal offers
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those pushing the limits
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Founded in 1904 to promote
exploration “by all means
possible,” The Explorers
Club is an international
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the advancement of field
exploration and scientific
inquiry. Among our members
are leading pioneers in
oceanography, mountaineering,
archaeology, and the planetary
and environmental sciences.
image by Cristian Donoso, diving in western patagonia