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February 2026 – Volume Thirty-Two, Number Two
Celebrating our 32th 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.
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EXPEDITION UPDATE
Honnold Tops Out for a Cool $500K; SNL Weighs In
Last month we tipped you off about celebrated climber Alex Honnold’s Jan. 24, 2026, stunt on Netflix to free solo the 1,667 ft. Taipei 101 skyscraper in Taiwan. He succeeded for a reported payment of $500,000.
The feat led to a Financial Times story titled “How the World Fell in Love with Climbing” (Feb. 1) by Josh Noble. The article investigates an explosion of interest in the sport, fueled by the post-pandemic boom in exercise.
Noble reports that while climbing has cultural roots in the outdoors, figures like Honnold – alongside the sport's inclusion in the Olympic Games – have helped transform it into a "young, dynamic, and vibrant" commercial success story.
Putting aside Honnold’s recent payday, FT reports many professional climbers struggle to earn a stable income. Prize money and federation budgets remain low compared with other sports,
The Netflix event also placed Honnold, 40, firmly in pop culture with a parody on NBC Saturday Night Live.
Watch the SNL segment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_C-ZzlGS8Vk
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Shark Researcher Says it all Started with Jaws
While the movie Jaws (1975) scared the bejeezus out of a young Mikki McComb-Kobza, Ph.D., to the point where she imagined sharks chasing her in a pool, the Steve Spielberg shocker encouraged her to pursue a career in shark research. (See EN, October 2017, June 2022).
Today, the Women Divers Hall of Fame honoree, a landlocked resident of Longmont, Colorado, is CEO & Chief Scientist of the Ocean First Institute and Assistant Adjunct Professor of the University of Colorado Boulder Ecology & Evolutionary Biology Department.
She’s often asked whether the oceans would be better without sharks. “Sharks play a vital role in the health of the ocean ecosystem,” she says. “Besides, it’s not a fair fight – while three to four people a year are killed by sharks, annually humans kill 100 million.”
In recent years, McComb-Kobza’s research led to the development of the world’s first sanctuary specifically dedicated to hammerhead sharks – the Golfo Dulce Hammerhead Shark Sanctuary in Costa Rica.
See related story below. Learn more:
https://mikkimccomb.com, www.oceanfirstinstitute.org
| | Easy, Peasy – One down, 49 to go. Delaware's highest point is the Ebright Azimuth, located in northern New Castle County near the Pennsylvania border (448 feet above sea level). It's known to Highpointers as an easily accessible "virtual drive-up" high point, visited by those seeking to reach all 50 state highpoints. | | |
Highpointers Still Climbing Tallest U.S. Peaks
Mt. Whitney is on the same level as Mississippi's Woodall Mountain, Nebraska's Panorama Point, or Indiana's Hoosier Hill. Each stand tall as a state highpoint.
The Highpointers Club, a group devoted to celebrating, and summiting, the highest peak in every state, was featured in EN in February 2014. They’re still going strong. In September 2025 they gathered for a convention in Bishop, California, and were profiled on CBS Sunday Morning (Jan. 18).
CBS asks why a person with enough skill to climb Wyoming's challenging Gannett Peak at nearly 14,000 feet, would also care about visiting Britton Hill, a parking lot in the panhandle of Florida with an elevation of 345 feet?
Watch the 4:47 piece here:
https://tinyurl.com/HighpointersCBSSundayMorning
For more information:
www.highpointers.org
| | Lhakpa Sherpa visits Boulder with her daughter Shiny Dijmarescu, 18, an accounting student at Tunxis Community College in Farmington, Connecticut. | | |
Hiking with Lhakpa
One Nepali attempting to summit the 50 state highpoints holds the Guinness World Record for most Everest summits by a woman (10). Will she succeed? All bets are on Lhakpa Sherpa, covered in EN in August 2024 in a story about her starring role in the Netflix documentary Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa.
Lhakpa is climbing the highpoints to spread a message of strength, resilience, and healing in support of her nonprofit Climb Any Mountain Initiative.
Based in West Hartford, Connecticut, the Explorers Club member now shares her love for the outdoors by leading hikes in the U.S. and the Himalayas.
In 2023, she was honored by The Explorers Club with the prestigious Tenzing Norgay Award. These days she’s selling her climbing gear to raise money for future projects. During a recent visit to Boulder to plan local “Hiking with Lhapka” routes, she tells EN, “I worked so hard and my life has been difficult. The message for those facing difficulties is ‘don’t give up.’”
She plans to return to Everest this spring to attempt two more summits at age 53.
Learn more:
www.hikingwithlhakpa.com, lhakpasherpa3@gmail.com
| | Hari on the summit of Mt. Vinson last month. (Photo: Abiral Rai) | | |
Hari Carries On, Achieves Seven Summits
Hari Budha Magar, MBE, from Canterbury, UK, summited the highest mountain on Antarctica, to become the first double above-knee amputee to summit the highest peaks on all seven continents. (See EN, September 2022).
Following years of preparation and a grueling three-day climb, Hari, 47, and his team (Abiral Rai, Mingma Sherpa and climb leader Jangbu Sherpa from Alpine Ascents) battled minus 25 degrees C. (minus 13 degrees F.) temperatures, high Antarctic winds, treacherous slopes, and freezing ice fields that tested his mind, body and prosthetic legs to the extreme, to reach the top of Mount Vinson (16,050-ft./4,892 m) on January 6, 2026.
He now hopes people will get behind his GiveWheel nonprofit to raise funds for vital veterans and disability charities. Hari lost both legs in 2010 to an IED in Afghanistan while serving with the British Army’s Ghurkha regiment.
“That IED should have killed me, but now I had a second chance and wanted to do something positive – be an inspiration to others.”
Learn more:
https://www.givewheel.com/fundraising/5346/hari-budha-magar-7-summits-charity-appeal/
EXPEDITION NOTES
| | Tshiring Lhamu Lama is one of the 50 honorees of the 2026 EC50 program. | | |
2026 Explorers Club 50 Honorees Represent 32 Nationalities
The stats are out about the sixth annual 2026 Explorers Club 50 program. There were 32 nationalities represented across all 50 honorees – 72% based outside the U.S. What’s more, 56% of the 2026 class are women; and 40% focus on traditional knowledge.
Awardees were broken down into five categories: Advocates, Alchemists, Guardians, Innovators and Storytellers. All represent little-known visionaries on the cutting edge of conservation, field science, and research that the world needs to know about.
One honoree that sticks in our mind is Tshiring Lhamu Lama who works tirelessly on snow leopard conservation in her home region of Dolpo, Nepal. Without available daycare in this region, she often takes her child up into some of the highest mountains on the planet to pursue her work.
Club President Richard Wiese posts on Facebook, “In a time that often feels divided, this group reminds us that curiosity still unites us, knowledge still matters, and action grounded in purpose can move the needle.”
“This is what optimism looks like. This is what exploration looks like today.”
See the entire group here:
https://50.explorers.org/community/
| | ECAD 2026 honoree Elodie Freymann spent nine months living off-the-grid among chimpanzees in Uganda’s Budongo Forest, uncovering cross-species medicinal knowledge and turning that work into documentary storytelling. (Photo: Austen Deery) | |
Explorers Club Announces ECAD 2026 Honorees
Odysseys, the sold-out 122nd Explorers Club Annual Dinner (ECAD) on April 18, 2026, will honor its newest class of explorers at the New York Glasshouse. They are:
Explorers Club Medal – Kristine McDivitt Tompkins – President and co-founder of Tompkins Conservation and former CEO of Patagonia, Inc.
Sylvia Earle Award for Exploration Excellence – SPHEREx Mission Team Jamie Bock, Principal Investigator; Olivier Doré, Project Scientist; and John Wisniewski, Program Scientist. The team completed the first infrared map of the entire sky in 102 colors.
William Beebe Award for Underwater Exploration – James Delgado, one of the world’s most distinguished maritime archaeologists.
Edward C. Sweeney Medal for Service to the Club – Janet Walsh, a long-serving member of the Ethics & Governance Committee.
President’s Award for Courage in Exploration – Morad Tahbaz, co-founder of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, whose life has been dedicated to wildlife conservation in Iran.
President’s Award for Conservation in Exploration – Paul Tudor Jones, founder of Tudor Investment Corporation who catalyzes economic opportunity while strengthening environmental conservation.
New Explorer Award – Elodie Freymann, a primatologist and scientific storyteller (see photo above); Rebecca Hui, an entrepreneur, artist, and cartographer; and Alexandra Climent, a rainforest conservationist, artist, and founder of Endangered Rainforest Rescue.
Learn more at: explorers.org
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Explorers Club Appoints Barbara Doran,
Third Woman President in its History
This month, the Explorers Club Board of Directors elected Barbara Doran, a member since 2015, as its 47th President. Doran has served as the Club's treasurer, was a board member, and is now set to become the third woman to lead the organization in its history, according to the Feb. 2, 2026, announcement. She replaces current president Richard Wiese in April.
Doran is CEO at BD8 Capital Partners, LLC, an independent wealth advisory and asset management firm. She holds a Business MBA from Harvard Business School and B.A. in English from Penn State University.
Beyond her financial career, Doran is a world-class athlete who competed for U.S. national teams in both field hockey and lacrosse. She remains an active competitor as a member of the U.S. Masters' Team in Field Hockey, participating in international tournaments worldwide.
“Together with our extraordinary members and partners around the world, we will continue to champion exploration of the natural world in its most expansive sense and to inspire the next generation of explorers," she said.
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Paleontologist/Museum Consultant Offers Book Collection for Free
Robert “Mac” West, a museum consultant based in Denver, is deaccessioning numerous books from his professional library. His career has involved university teaching (biology and geology), paleontological research in the western U.S., Arctic Canada, and the Himalayan foothills of Pakistan and Nepal, as well as directing museums and, most recently, consulting with numerous museums (mostly natural history, science, children’s and general) worldwide.
Books in his library are available to interested readers of Expedition News at no cost so long as shipping is covered. Specific titles are available by contacting West directly.
For more information: rmacwest@gmail.com
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
I don’t know where I’m going from here but I promise it won’t be boring.
- David Bowie (1947-2016), English singer, songwriter and actor.
EXPEDITION FOCUS
| | Director Steven Spielberg on the set of Jaws with the mechanical shark – “Bruce” – in the background. The boat also played a starring role. (Photo: Universal Studios) | | |
Orca, Co-Star of Jaws, Gets a Re-make
Jaws may have frightened the bejeezus out of Mikki McComb-Kobza (see above), but it also made people aware of the plight of these remarkable predators, and in the process, inspired young marine biologists to dedicate their careers to learn about protecting sharks, according to Melissa Hobson writing in Dive magazine (Nov. 24, 2025).
The other star of the 1975 horror film was the boat, named Orca, a modified 30-foot wooden lobster boat that was sold privately after filming. It later just rotted away.
Last year, Mike Sterling, a Jaws enthusiast and marine carpenter based in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, brought a meticulously crafted, full-scale replica back to life. In fact, the highlight of the Jaws 50th Anniversary festival on Martha's Vineyard in June 2025 was the unveiling of Sterling’s re-make – right down to the yellow barrels, the coffee pots, cabin lamps and Quint’s weathered upholstery – that paid homage to the iconic vessel from the classic film.
“I traveled back in time last summer when I walked the deck of Mike's restored Orca on Martha's Vineyard, and I got goosebumps,” Atlantic shark researcher and author Greg Skomal tells EN.
“It was surreal - Mike's attention to detail is remarkable. I believe this recreation of the Orca will inspire others to respect, enjoy, and even study sharks, much like the original inspired me,” Skomal says.
One of the biggest challenges for Sterling’s labor of love? “An understanding wife,” he tells the boating site The Drift.
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The Replica Orca launches from Martha’s Vineyard Shipyard in summer 2025.
(Photo: Nicholas Vukota)
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The re-creation is being used for shark research and is touring boat shows and festivals to connect with fans of the toothy film. For the rest of us, we’ll just have to settle for a 31-inch version from Agora Models (agoramodels.com) which is taking pre-orders this month for a jaw-dropping £1,499 ($2,052).
Learn more:
https://www.returnofalegend.com/
Watch the pre-launch sizzle reel:
https://youtu.be/n-R1qO0grjY
EXPEDITION MARKETING
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Move Over Thin Mints:
Girl Scouts Launch Adventure-Ready Exploremores!
The Girl Scouts’ newest cookie warms the cockles of our heart. Like we’ve been saying all along, the world needs to explore more, not less. Now those sash, vest, tunic-wearing young girls, some 1.7 million in the U.S. alone, seem to agree. The 114-year-old organization recently launched its newest Girl Scout Cookie, Exploremores!
Move over Thin Mints. This treat is more base camp than bake sale. The adventurous new crispy chocolate outer layer surrounds a triple-threat crème layer featuring marshmallow, chocolate, and toasted almond flavors. Reviewers have described them as a "softer Oreo" or "chocolate Teddy Grahams," with the almond flavor being subtle rather than overpowering. It’s designed to replace outgoing favorites Toast-Yay! and S'mores.
Exploremores! will retail for $7, a tasty complement to the salty, expensive freeze-dried gruel served on many expeditions. We can’t wait to explore a box for ourselves.
Whet your appetite here:
https://tinyurl.com/NewGSACookie
EXPEDITION INK
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Where the Wild Things Roam
Roam: Wild Animals and the Race to Repair Our Fractured World (Patagonia, October 2025), explores the urgent need to rebuild a kinder, more connected world for wildlife. Science journalist Hillary Rosner explores the ways non-human species move around the planet, and how our roads and dams and fences and farms and mines and subdivisions have a cascading impact on virtually every animal – and plant – in the world.
Drawing on more than 200 interviews and reporting from landscapes across the U.S., Central America, Europe and Africa, Rosner introduces scientists, farmers, dedicated volunteers, and others working to restore wildlife corridors and reimagine human infrastructure.
Rosner writes, “From childhood, we’re taught the phrase ‘bird’s-eye view.’
But how often do we really try to see the world from the perspective of a bird? Or a bear, a frog, a sloth, a moth, an elephant?
“To ensure animals can move where they need to, conservation will increasingly
require us to predict their pathways and end points, and to make certain those places don’t all wind up as reservoirs, roads, or parking lots.”
For more information:
https://tinyurl.com/RosnerRoam
BUZZ WORDS
Jetbridge Jesus
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Where numerous passengers board a Southwest Airlines aircraft with wheelchair assistance, in order to board first and get the best seats but are just fine walking off the plane unassisted.
(Source: Story about Southwest Airlines going from open to assigned seating, which should alleviate claims of post-flight medical miracles. Posted by Jim Glab, SFGate.com, Jan. 24, 2026.)
ON THE HORIZON
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Tales From Dark Places, March 21, 2026,
Explorers Club, 46 E. 70th Street, New York
Tales From Dark Places focuses on exploration from the darkness of outer space, the depths of the deepest oceans, and from some of the darkest and remotest underground labyrinths in the world, told in most cases by cavers.
This annual all-day lecture series is jointly sponsored by the National Speleological Society (NSS), National Speleological Foundation (NSF), and The Explorers Club.
For details including ticket information: Co-Chairs John Scheltens (sdcowboy7@cs.com), Chris Nicola (chrisofuaycef@gmail.com).
| | Jon Krakauer (left) with David Grann | | |
Jon Krakauer with David Grann: Into Thin Air, Thirty Years On, May 11, 2026, 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Avenue, New York
Thirty years ago, the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, in which eight climbers were killed and several others were stranded by a storm, shocked the world. Into Thin Air, Krakauer’s firsthand account of what followed, became a landmark of modern nonfiction, considered not just as reportage but as literature.
To mark the anniversary, Krakauer is joined by David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon and The Wager, and a writer equally adept at turning fact into narrative – for an evening devoted to the art of telling true stories that refuse to let go.
With Everest as its axis, the conversation ranges from ambition and risk to memory, responsibility, and the long shadow a single book can cast. This event is presented in partnership with the American Himalayan Foundation.
For details:
https://www.92ny.org/event/jon-krakauer-with-david-grann
| | Travel With Purpose, A Field Guide to Voluntourism (Rowman & Littlefield) by Jeff Blumenfeld – People are traveling in record numbers 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. ©2026 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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