Adventure in 60 Seconds: This Week in Exploration

Text by Tetsuhiko Endo

Spring may have sprung (-29C as opposed to -40C), but the North Pole remains a pretty testing place to traverse. Pen Hadow and Co. on the Caitlin expedition finally got their food last week, but were undoubtedly regretting that extra weight when the ice around their tent start breaking up. Watch the video of a less than thrilled Hadow explaining exactly what’s going on. Despite having firmer ice under their feet and crossing their first line of latitude at 84 degrees, John Huston and Tyler Fish have had to deal with sticky, snow-related slow downs.

Just slightly further south, the Baffin Babes were dodging polar bears and overzealous Austrian big game hunters while asking themselves that timeless question: “How close are we going to let it come before shooting a warning shot?” Referring to the bears, of course.

In the Himalaya, civil unrest in the Kangchenjunga region complicated another woman’s expedition when Nives Meroi decided to suspend her scheduled attempt at Annapurna. It turned out that the reports were a bit exaggerated, and Edurn Pasaban, one of the two other women competing with Meroi to be the first female summiteer of all the 8,000 meter peeks in the world, flew in on Monday to start preparing.

Preparing is something that Sarah Outen has done a lot of lately as her mission to row across the Indian Ocean had to be towed back into port due to electrical failure on the boat. Outen is regrouping, and rewiring, in preparation for a second launch when she gets a window of good weather.

One person who had better hope that he doesn’t have electrical problems is American billionaire Charles Simonyi who blasted off on his second flight making him the first space tourist to enter the great beyond twice.