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August 2025 – Volume Thirty-One, Number Eight
Celebrating our 31th year!
EXPEDITION NEWS, founded in 1994, is the monthly review of significant expeditions, research projects, and newsworthy adventures. It is distributed online to media representatives, corporate sponsors, educators, research librarians, explorers, environmentalists, and outdoor enthusiasts. This forum on exploration covers projects that stimulate, motivate, and educate.
| | View of Kilimanjaro from Amboseli National Park, Kenya. | | |
PULSE AT THE PEAK –
DOCS TEST MEDICAL DEVICES ON KILIMANJARO
A team of renowned medical professionals and expedition leaders with decades of experience in high-altitude medicine, emergency care, and mountain exploration are climbing Kilimanjaro this month to study human physiology at altitude and test how various healthcare devices perform in that rarified environment.
They hope to summit early this month.
The team will traverse all five distinct climate zones on Kili, conducting medical research and providing care along the way, combining cutting-edge medical research with humanitarian impact, hopefully setting world records while advancing healthcare access in remote mountain communities.
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A Butterfly iQ+ Handheld Portable Ultrasound
like this one will be field tested on Kilimanjaro.
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The project will use satellite technology, wearable physiologic monitors including heart and blood monitors like EEG, ECG, Pulse Oximetry, and conduct eye studies using fundoscopy. They hope to perform the highest altitude EEG, highest altitude telehealth visit (thanks to IridiumGo), highest altitude fundoscope study, and particularly, the highest altitude ultrasound employing a handheld, whole-body ultrasound system at 19,341 feet.
The Explorers Club flag expedition will also conduct groundbreaking research on HAPE (High Altitude Pulmonary Edema) detection and HACE (High Altitude Cerebral Edema) evaluation using portable ultrasound technology.
They plan to donate advanced medical equipment to Marangu Lutheran Hospital, located in Tanzania, about 40 km east of Moshi town, on the eastern slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, near the Marangu gate. It provides healthcare access to over 400,000 Mount Kilimanjaro region residents.
| | Dr. Michael Grinn, MD, MPH | | |
One principal investigator on the six-person team is Dr. Michael Grinn, MD, MPH, an Adult Cardiothoracic Anesthesiologist based in Jersey City, New Jersey.
He tells EN, “Ultimately the data we collect will be analyzed and potentially used to create AI algorithms that may have an impact on prevention of altitude sickness in the future, as well as improving brain health and heart and lung function.
“By bringing cutting edge diagnostic tools with us to altitude, we may be able to demonstrate ways to prevent climbers from falling ill – and discover new ways to treat individuals suffering from similar issues at any altitude.”
Supporters to date include Butterfly, Iridium, Lucidify, Poncho Outdoors, and Retia Medical, among others.
For more information:
www.pulseatthepeak.org
EXPEDITION UPDATE
| | Forty years ago, Neil Armstrong and Sir Edmund Hillary traveled by plane to the North Pole. Last month, their sons re-created that little-known historic journey. Documentarian Orly Orlyson (far left) reached the pole on July 26 with (l-r) Peter Hillary (son), Alexander Hillary (grandson) and Mark Armstrong, son of Neil. | | |
Sons of Neil Armstrong and Sir Edmund Hillary Reach the North Pole
With the families of Sir Edmund Hillary and Neil Armstrong, an Icelandic film crew from the Exploration Museum in Húsavík re-created a little known 1985 expedition to the North Pole, a historic chapter in 20th century exploration (see EN July 2025).
In 1985, a polar team compiled by professional expedition leader Mike Dunn, including Sir Edmund Hillary, Neil Armstrong, Steve Fossett, Patrick Morrow, and a group of everyday explorers, embarked on a journey to the North Pole. The mission was kept deliberately out of the public eye, at Armstrong’s request, and the story remained untold.
The Icelandic documentarians tagged along as Hillary’s son and grandson, and Armstrong’s son, retraced their steps, traveling aboard Ponant Explorations hybrid electric expedition ship Le Commandant Charcot.
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Mark Armstrong reaches the North Pole
in the footsteps of his father Neil. (Photo: David Concannon)
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During the transit to the pole, researchers from CNRS, a French scientific institute, were measuring salinity, water temperature, and the presence of nanoplastics in polar seawater.
Produced by Icelandic filmmakers Orly Orlyson and Rafnar Orri, the upcoming documentary titled North Pole 85, weaves together original 1985 material, personal accounts, and new footage from the 2025 return journey to bring the 2025 expedition to life. It will be released later in 2026.
Watch New Zealand TV coverage of the pole arrival here:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360777288/sir-ed-hillarys-son-grandson-retrace-kiwi-icons-famous-journey-neil-armstrong
For more information:
Orly Orlyson, producer, orly@northpole85.com
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Never apologize for burning too brightly or collapsing into yourself. That is how galaxies are made.”
– Tyler Kent White, author and poet from Mesa, Arizona, known for his collections of poetry and prose that explore themes of love, loss, depression, and resilience. (tylerkentwhite.com)
EXPEDITION FOCUS
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Boldly Go to Ticonderoga, New York
Ticonderoga, New York, is best known for its famous fort that played a crucial role in both the French and Indian War and the American Revolutionary War.
Any student who started school back in the analog days will appreciate that the iconic Ticonderoga yellow No. 2 pencil they chewed incessantly is a product of the Dixon Ticonderoga Company.
But for thousands of sci-fan fans, the city at the confluence of Lake George and Lake Champlain has another draw: the Star Trek Original Series Set Tour.
| | Beam Me Up: The replica bridge is better than the original. | | |
Star Trek is famed for inspiring future space travelers. Mae C. Jemison, 68, the first African American woman to travel to space, has frequently cited the late Nichelle Nichols' portrayal of Lt. Uhura in the original Star Trek series as a significant inspiration for her own aspirations in science and space exploration.
Trek superfan James Crawley, a professional Elvis impersonator from Ticonderoga, inherited the original series blueprints from William Ware Theiss, Star Trek’s costume designer. In 2014, he built a replica set of the USS Enterprise and arranged with CBS to open the Starship Enterprise as a museum.
The sets are complete reproductions based on original blueprints, and hundreds of hours of research and thousands of photographs. They look exactly as they did in Desilu Studio between 1966-1969 while Star Trek was in production.
Actor William Shatner, best known for his portrayal of the Enterprise’s Capt. Kirk, visits twice a year, as does other cast members. Kate Mulgrew (Admiral Janeway) returns in mid-August.
An all-inclusive package for the complete Kate Mulgrew Star Trek experience is $900; the Shatner package in November is an astronomical $1,500. Standard tours are $24.
Learn more:
https://startrektour.com
MEDIA MATTERS
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Ornithopod vertebra from the Denver Formation 763 feet beneath the parking lot at
the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
(Photo: Richard M Wicker/Denver Museum of Nature and Science)
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Dem Bones: Museum Finds Dino Under Its Own Parking Lot
A Denver museum known for its dinosaur displays has made a fossil bone discovery closer to home than anyone ever expected, under its own parking lot.
It came from a hole drilled more than 750 feet deep to study geothermal heating potential for the museum, according to an AP story by Mead Gruver and Thomas Peipert (July 10).
With a bore only a couple of inches wide, museum officials struggled to describe just how unlikely it was to hit a dinosaur, even in a region with a fair number of such fossils.
“Finding a dinosaur bone in a core is like hitting a hole in one from the moon. It’s like winning the Willy Wonka factory. It’s incredible, it’s super rare,” said James Hagadorn, the museum’s curator of geology. Only two similar finds have been noted in bore hole samples anywhere in the world, not to mention on the grounds of a dinosaur museum, according to museum officials.
“I would love to dig a 763-foot hole in the parking lot to excavate that dinosaur, the rest of it. But I don’t think that’s going to fly because we really need parking,” Hagadorn said.
Read more:
https://tinyurl.com/Denverdembones
EXPEDITION FUNDING
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Explorers Club Expands Exploration Grants
For more than a century, The Explorers Club has stood at the vanguard of discovery. Today it’s facing a defining moment according to Club President Richard Wiese in a July 29, 2025, statement to its members and supporters. It reads in part:
“Recent cuts to scientific funding and research programs threaten not just the work of individual scientists and institutions, but the broader mission of exploration itself,” Wiese writes.
“The Explorers Club cannot remain silent. We reaffirm our founding principle: that knowledge gained through exploration benefits all humanity. We are deeply concerned that the erosion of support for science will limit future discoveries, stifle innovation, and endanger the health of our planet.”
Wiese reports the Club will expand its support for the next generation of explorers by pledging to increase grant funding in 2025 to empower fieldwork, scientific inquiry, and conservation efforts across the globe.
“Now is the time to invest – not retreat. … Because exploration is not a luxury. It is a necessity.”
More details on its plans to increase funding are expected soon. Read the full statement on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-wiese/
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Funding Available for Coastal Norway Projects
The Hurtigruten Foundation, supported by the legendary 132-year-old Norwegian cruise line of the same name, aims to make a positive impact on the places it sails. The foundation is a collaboration between Hurtigruten, its guests, partners and private donors.
In recent years it has supported 99 projects along the coasts of mainland Norway and Svalbard, projects as diverse as cleaning up remote beaches to training search and rescue dogs in Svalbard – all focused on helping coastal communities, combat marine litter, and preserve imperiled ecosystems. Deadline for the next round of funding is November 1, 2025.
Apply here:
https://www.hurtigruten.com/en/hurtigruten-foundation
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Grants Available for Ocean and Coastal Area Conservation
The Ferris Olson Family Foundation for Ocean Stewardship (FOFFOS), a 501(c)(3) charitable giving foundation, awards grants for projects that promote conservation, ecosystem restoration and protection, and advocacy of and community stewardship for ocean and coastal areas as well as marine animal rescue and rehabilitation. FOFFOS grants are for the support of action-oriented projects.
Grants are made only to entities recognized as a 501(c)(3) by the IRS. Awardees for 2024 were: South Carolina Aquarium (South Carolina), Oregon Shores Conservation Coalition (Oregon), New England Aquarium (Massachusetts), The Marine Mammal Center (California), Inwater Research Group (Florida), and Friends of Casco Bay (Maine).
The submission deadline for funding in 2026 is October 13, 2025.
For more information: https://foffos.org, FerrisOlsonFoundation@gmail.com
EXPEDITION INK
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The Beast in the Clouds:
The Roosevelt Brothers’ Deadly Quest to Find the Mythical Giant Panda
By Nathalia Holt
The sons of Sir Edmund Hillary and Neil Armstrong are on a quest to the North Pole to recreate their fathers’ little-known excursion to the region in 1985 (see related story).
In a similar vein, in 1929, Theodore Roosevelt Jr., 41, and his younger brother Kermit, 39, sons of President Theodore Roosevelt, wanted to explore on their own, apart from the family spotlight.
They were seeking the “empty spots” on the maps, the areas that had yet to be explored and described by Westerners. From these remote places, they hoped to bring back exotic animals to aid the scientific community’s understanding of taxonomy, biological diversity, and its relatively recent theories of evolution. The animal they most wanted was an elusive black and white bear that, at the time, was more legend than scientific fact.
They faced faulty maps, unfamiliar dialects, blizzards, monsoons, altitude sickness, bandits, a smallpox epidemic, and disruptive scrimmages between the forces in the Chinese Civil War.
In The Beast in the Clouds (One Signal Publishers, 2025), Nathalia Holt tells the full story of this expedition into China’s Himalayan wilderness for the first time. By bringing pandas to the West, a legacy that continues today with new pandas arriving in Washington, D.C. and San Diego, the Roosevelt brothers’ far-flung adventure ignited today’s conservation efforts.
Holt shines a light on the importance of scientific research across the globe in biodiversity, anti-hunting and poaching initiatives, and its relevance in the fight against climate change.
Learn more:
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Beast-in-the-Clouds/Nathalia-Holt/9781668027745
WEB WATCH
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Bad Decisions: When Expeditions Go Wrong
The phrase "an adventure is an expedition gone wrong" is widely attributed to the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen who was known for his meticulous planning and preparations. He believed, “Victory awaits him who has everything in order, luck, people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time, this is called bad luck."
Or in this case, Bad Decisions.
New Zealand explorer Kasimir Zierl of Poison-Dart Films has launched a new YouTube series called Bad Decisions, featuring true stories of explorers surviving life threatening danger and how they made it out alive.
Current episodes include capsizing in the Sea of Komodo; being ambushed in a tribal war in Papua New Guinea; and being trapped in an industrial water pipe in a remote China cave.
View episode 1 here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS_SaxIpm78
Got a good survival story? Kasimir is currently looking for new storytellers for upcoming episodes, especially those with high-stakes adventure, survival, or exploration tales.
Reach him at: director@poison-dart.com
BUZZ WORDS
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Celestrial Asterism
A recognizable pattern or grouping of stars in the night sky. It describes what it looks like. Think of the Big Dipper. Also, these dots and sticks patterns can often be part of more than one constellation. Thus, an asterism is not a constellation, rather they are informal, traditional groupings of stars.
Asterisms were used by ancient mariners to guide and navigate their voyages across the oceans. Examples: the Big Dipper, the Summer Triangle, the Winter Hexagon, the Northern and Southern Crosses, and the Great Square of Pegasus.
Source: Astronomy educator Mark Laurin aka AstroMark (astromark.org)
| | Allen's Rule predicts chunkier bodies with short extremities in cold climates versus leaner bodies with longer extremities in hot climates. | | |
Allen’s Rule
Allen's Rule is an ecogeographical principle that describes how the body shape of warm-blooded animals (endotherms) adapts to different climates. Formulated by Joel Asaph Allen in 1877, it broadly states that:
Animals living in colder climates tend to have shorter and thicker limbs and other bodily appendages (like ears and tails). This is because a more compact body with smaller appendages reduces the overall surface area-to-volume ratio. A lower surface area means less heat is lost to the environment, helping the animal conserve body heat in cold conditions.
Conversely, animals living in warmer climates tend to have longer and more slender appendages. These longer appendages increase the surface area-to-volume ratio, which allows for greater heat dissipation, helping the animal cool down in hot environments.
Source: Darren S. Joy, University of Southern California Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
IN PASSING
| Felix Baumgartner (1969-2025) | | |
“Fearless Felix” Dies
Felix Baumgartner, the Austrian extreme adventurer and BASE jumper who hurtled to earth from more than 24 miles high in 2012 and became the first human to beak the sound barrier while free-falling, died July 17 in a paragliding accident along the Adriatic coast in Italy. He was 56.
Felix Baumgartner was born on April 20, 1969, in Salzburg, Austria, home of Red Bull’s global headquarters. He learned to skydive at age 16, honed his skills as a paratrooper in the Austrian military and, in 1988, began performing skydiving exhibitions for Red Bull, makers of a carbonated energy drink that, frankly, tastes like liquid candy.
Baumgartner distinguished himself as “a great corporate pitchman” for Red Bull as it sought to cultivate “a daring and intrepid image,” said Matt Higgins, the author of Bird Dream: Adventures at the Extremes of Human Flight (Penguin Press, 2014).
In the world of extreme sport, though, Baumgartner was a largely revered figure. On Oct. 14, 2012, in a project called Red Bull Stratos, he ascended into the stratosphere in a capsule lifted by a helium balloon and then, wearing a pressurized suit, plunged from 128,100 feet, or 24.26 miles, toward earth, landing in Roswell, N.M.
His altitude record was broken on Oct. 24, 2014, by Alan Eustace, a Google executive who jumped from 135,890 feet, more than 25 miles.
First to attempt such a high-altitude jump was the late USAF Col. Joe Kittinger whose then record-setting leap was a 102,800-foot skydive on August 16, 1960, as part of Project Excelsior. This jump broke multiple records, including highest parachute jump and longest freefall. (See EN, November 2012).
Learn more:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimclash/2025/07/18/daredevil-felix-baumgartner-gone-way-too-early-at-56/
ON THE HORIZON
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RGS Explore Weekend 2025, Royal Geographical Society,
London, Oct. 31 – Nov. 2, 2025
The Royal Geographical Society’s Explore 2025 is the UK's only dedicated event for planning expeditions and purposeful journeys. It’s aimed at students planning an overseas project, budding field researchers, independent travelers seeking to make a positive impact, or adventurous content creators looking to tell transformative stories. Learn from over 100 world-leading expedition professionals and field researchers.
Attend diverse workshops from planning your itinerary and managing risk to ethical travel and sharing your discoveries. Get tailored guidance for your specific project, big or small.
Explore 2025 is chaired by renowned explorer, environmentalist and broadcaster Paul Rose.
Cost: £95 - £125. Register here:
https://www.rgs.org/events
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LISTEN TO EN ON THE GO
Say what you will about AI, but around here we’re pretty sold on it. Hear this month’s Expedition News Deep Dive courtesy of Google NotebookLM (note: the audio file takes about 10-sec. to load):
https://tinyurl.com/ENAugust2025DeepDive
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For Sale: The World Explorers Bureau
Opportunity for Explorers & Educators! The World Explorers Bureau, founded by Tim Lavery FRCGS, in 2011, a global speakers bureau, education program management and publishing business, is now available for acquisition.
Included in the sale are the company name, official website, domain name, design assets, and all active social media channels. This package offers instant brand recognition and a solid digital presence in the explorer and Speaker Agency space.
Offers more than $3,500 are invited.
Contact: Tim Lavery, timalavery@gmail.com, https://www.worldexplorersbureau.com/
| Travel With Purpose, A Field Guide to Voluntourism (Rowman & Littlefield) by Jeff Blumenfeld – People are traveling in record number and many include voluntourists. Be ready to lend a hand wherever you go. How to travel and make a difference while you see the world? Read excerpts and “Look Inside” at: tinyurl.com/voluntourismbook | | |
Get Sponsored! – Need money for your next project? Read about proven techniques that will help you find both cash and in-kind sponsors. If the trip is bigger than you, and is designed to help others, well, that’s half the game right there. Read Jeff Blumenfeld’s Get Sponsored: A Funding Guide for Explorers, Adventurers and Would Be World Travelers.(Skyhorse Publishing).
Buy it here:
http://www.amazon.com/Get-Sponsored-Explorers-Adventurers-Travelers-ebook/dp/B00H12FLH2
Advertise in Expedition News – For more information: blumassoc@aol.com
EXPEDITION NEWS is published by Blumenfeld and Associates, LLC, 290 Laramie Blvd., Boulder, CO 80304 USA. Tel. 203 326 1200, editor@expeditionnews.com. Editor/publisher: Jeff Blumenfeld. Research editor: Lee Kovel. ©2025 Blumenfeld and Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN: 1526-8977. Subscriptions: US$36/yr. available by e-mail only. Credit card payments accepted through www.paypal.com. Read EXPEDITION NEWS at www.expeditionnews.com.
Research past issues of Expedition News dating back to May 1995 courtesy of the Utah State University Outdoor Recreation Archive. Access is free at: https://tinyurl.com/ENArchivesUSU
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