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1 month ago | 
explorersweb.com | Andrew Marshall |Kris Annapurna |Angela Benavides |Rebecca McPhee
By the time Gunther Pluschow’s aircraft plowed into a Patagonian lake in 1931, the 44-year-old had already experienced a lifetime of adventure. The German aviator and explorer was the first to survey and film Argentina’s most famous region by air, a contribution for which the Argentinian Air Force still lauds him to this day. But those expeditions in the late 1920s and early 1930s were just a slice of Pluschow’s dashing life.
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1 month ago | 
explorersweb.com | Andrew Marshall |Kris Annapurna |Angela Benavides |Rebecca McPhee
In the end, in the dark, it all came down to three things — experience, good judgment in the face of uncertainty, and penguin meat. It was 1903, their second winter on the White Continent. Swiss geologist Otto Nordenskjold and five men under his command shivered in a hut on Snow Hill island, off the eastern coast of the Antarctica Peninsula.
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2 months ago | 
explorersweb.com | Kris Annapurna |Lou Bodenhemier |Angela Benavides |Andrew Marshall
Nepal’s Department of Tourism recently added four Kangchenjunga secondary summits and two Lhotse subpeaks to its list of 8,000m peaks. We examine the climbing history of Kangchenjunga’s subpeaks and the challenges they present. Note that Nepal inflated the 8,000m list without international approval. Five subpeaks – or is it six? Kangchenjunga (8,586m) is the third-highest mountain in the world.
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2 months ago | 
explorersweb.com | Lou Bodenhemier |Kris Annapurna |Angela Benavides |Andrew Marshall
Three thousand meters above Hell Hole Bend canyon in northern Arizona, a German skydiver crouched in a helicopter. Max Manow has been skydiving since he was 14 years old, and is currently doing so with the support of Red Bull, the energy drink company that bankrolls extreme stunts. The glossy video of what follows appears to be a scene from a Mission Impossible movie. But it’s a real stunt, and the first of its kind ever to be attempted, let alone completed successfully.
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2 months ago | 
explorersweb.com | Kris Annapurna |Lou Bodenhemier |Angela Benavides |Andrew Marshall
The many factors that can cause 8,000m expeditions to fail include hypoxia, deep snow, avalanches, sickness, accidents, and bad weather. This winter, all four expeditions (on Everest, Annapurna I, Manaslu, and Makalu) ended without a summit. Three of the four failed because of strong winds. The other — Jost Kobusch’s solo attempt on Everest — ended after an earthquake. Note that Kobusch had already reached his seasonal goal of 7,500m.
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2 months ago | 
explorersweb.com | Rebecca McPhee |Lou Bodenhemier |Andrew Marshall |Angela Benavides
New research has shown that the low oxygen levels that accompany high-altitude sports impact the quality of sperm and decrease male fertility. The study addresses the serious decline in male fertility over the last five decades. Since the 1970s, sperm counts have dropped by 50%, and there is no sign of that slowing down. Several studies have shown how a lack of oxygen reaching the testicles threatens reproductive health.
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2 months ago | 
explorersweb.com | Kris Annapurna |Lou Bodenhemier |Andrew Marshall |Angela Benavides
On January 29, 1873, Prince Luigi Amadeo Giuseppe Maria Ferdinando Francisco di Savoia-Aosta, better known as the Duke of Abruzzi, was born. The Italian Duke’s interests were extensive. He was an arctic explorer, sailor, oceanographer, big-game hunter, topographer, geologist, botanist, zoologist, financier, and mountaineer. Today, we examine the Duke’s mountaineering activities. Early startThe Duke of Abruzzi was a member of the Italian Royal House of Savoy.
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2 months ago | 
explorersweb.com | Andrew Marshall |Lou Bodenhemier |Angela Benavides
Few of us are lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the Northern Lights from below. Seeing them from the other side around — that is, from orbit — well, that’s a rare treat reserved for space farers. NASA astronaut Don Pettit got a chance to do just that on January 6 as the International Space Station flew above the Aurora Borealis on January 6. Luckily for you and me, he recorded the display and posted the video to X. The ISS orbits the Earth at an altitude of about 412 kilometers.
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2 months ago | 
explorersweb.com | Ash Routen |Lou Bodenhemier |Andrew Marshall |Angela Benavides
Polish adventurer Mateusz Waligora is returning to the Gobi Desert in Mongolia next month. Waligora plans to fat bike from the Altai region in Western Mongolia to the city of Sainshand in the East. The 1,400km journey starts in February when temperatures can drop to -30°C. In 2018, Waligora walked 1,785km across the Mongolian part of the Gobi while pulling a cart. He has previously climbed Everest from sea level and skied solo to the South Pole via the Hercules Inlet route.
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2 months ago | 
explorersweb.com | Angela Benavides |Lou Bodenhemier |Andrew Marshall
Tasio Martin and Ibon Mendia of Spain have made the most of Patagonia’s stingy weather windows. After a new line on Torres del Paine, they nailed another new route on Aguja Mermoz in the Fitz Roy massif last week. A one-day break in the otherwise stormy weather was all the two Basques needed to send a 500m line on the east face of Aguja Mermoz. “It was a single, 18-hour push up and down a line we had been planning for days,” Martin wrote.
