|
January 2026 – Volume Thirty-Two, Number One
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.
| | The RV Nathaniel B. Palmer, the U.S.'s primary Antarctic research icebreaker for over 30 years, is not sailing due to the National Science Foundation (NSF) terminating its lease, effective after the 2025-2026 Antarctic season. This move is causing significant concern among scientists about a data gap in polar research and U.S. leadership in the region. (Photo: Michael Van Woert, NOAA NESDIS, ORA via Commons) | | |
CRUISE SHIPS AND YACHTS STEP IN AS
U.S. GOVERNMENT CUTS BACK
In exploration, generally speaking, it really doesn’t matter where the funding comes from. What matters is the field research such financial support engenders. Antarctica, for instance, is replete with geographic features named for benefactors. Rockefeller Mountains, Rothschild Island, Kaiser Wilhelm II Land, Edsel Ford Ranges, and Royal Society Range, to name a few.
Lately, cruise ships and yachts are picking up some of the slack as government funding is slashed.
The U.S. has pulled its last dedicated research ship, the Nathaniel B. Palmer, from Antarctica, significantly impacting scientific research, according to illuminem.com.
The move reduces America’s presence on the continent and hinders vital climate and environmental studies, including research on the Thwaites “Doomsday” Glacier, which could raise sea levels.
| | Jon Bowermaster (Photo: Ocean8Films.com) | | |
Usually the ice-worthy ship would be mid-voyage by now, delivering scientists and supplies to the three American science bases, the Amundsen-Scott South Pole, McMurdo and Palmer, writes journalist and environmental filmmaker Jon Bowermaster, 71, of Ocean 8 Films located in the New York Hudson Valley.
The icebreaking research vessel has been sidelined, Bowermaster believes, by cuts made in Washington, D.C., “by people who’ve never visited Antarctica and do not understand the value of the continent as a mostly pristine haven for important research.”
Bowermaster will represent The Explorers Club on the French Ponant ship Le Commandant Charcot reporting, posting and filmmaking during its January cruise themed, “Beyond the Antarctic Circle, In the Wake of Jean-Baptiste Charcot.” Charcot was the Frenchman who explored Antarctica from 1904-1907.
| | |
Calling All Yachts
Another example: this year, non-governmental funding will be emphasized in Monaco as it hosts a major international yachting and exploration event from March 21-24, 2026. This follows the announcement of a new transatlantic partnership between the Yacht Club de Monaco and The Explorers Club of New York.
The four-day gathering is designed to bring together yacht owners, captains, scientists, institutions and innovation stakeholders around a shared ambition: positioning yachting as a platform for knowledge, exploration and environmental responsibility.
The conference, including explorer Victor Vescovo, will showcase concrete examples of how yachting can actively contribute to scientific research.
Awards will recognize exemplary projects that demonstrate alternative uses of yachts as platforms for exploration, research, innovation and knowledge sharing.
Cruise ships and yacht support hardly replaces government funding, but it certainly helps, and climate studies need all the help it can get.
Learn more:
Ocean8Films.com, ponant.com, yacht-club-monaco.mc/en, explorers.org
EXPEDITION NOTES
| | The new museum will display a replica of da Vinci’s helical airscrew. | | |
Leonardo da Vinci Museum of North America Opens in Spring 2026
In Pueblo, Colorado, otherwise known as the home of the Colorado State Fair, the world’s third Leonard da Vinci Museum is on track to open in spring 2026.
The Pueblo Leonardo da Vinci Museum will be the first of its kind in the U.S. and only the third in the entire world. Da Vinci (1452-1519) is considered one of the great artists of the Renaissance. He was a painter, sculptor, inventor, architect and botanist, a man of almost other worldly imagination.
Ever fascinated with birds and flight, Leonardo left to the world 15th century renderings that continue to both baffle and amaze in the 21st century, over five hundred years after his death.
Consider da Vinci’s single, screw-shaped blade that he believed would achieve flight, much like a helicopter rotor provides lift. But because it relies on muscle power, it probably never would accomplish what he envisioned.
The exhibition is made possible through an exclusive partnership with the Artisans of Florence – creators of museum-quality Leonardo da Vinci reconstructions using materials da Vinci himself would have recognized, such as wood, rope, canvas, and iron.
Visit in late August and then discover whether you can stomach death-defying fried butter, fried cookie dough, giant turkey legs, and cream puffs at the nearby state fair.
Learn more:
www.davincisteam.org
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“The chance and hazard of existence brings many surprises, and you soon learn to seize and enjoy what life offers.”
- Knud Rasmussen (1879-1933), Greenlandic Danish polar explorer and anthropologist. Source: Rasmussen’s The People of the Polar North: A Record (University of Michigan Press, 1908).
MEDIA MATTERS
| | |
Alex Honnold plans to free solo Taipei 101 on January 23.
It’s the 11th tallest building in the world. (Photo: Netflix).
| | |
Skyscraper Live
On Jan. 23, famed climber Alex Honnold, 40, will free solo the supertall Taipei 101 skyscraper in Taiwan (1,667-ft.). The married father of two says ascent of the world’s 11th tallest building will be the biggest urban free solo climb ever.
Alain Robert (the “French Spider-Man”) climbed the exterior with ropes in 2004 as an authorized event for the building's opening, facing challenging conditions like rain and strong winds.
A few of Honnold’s 720,000 Facebook followers are nervous:
Ranqi Zhu posts, “You have proved yourself, dude. We love you. Please don’t.”
Jacob Andrew posts, “Dude, stop. We know you’re already the GOAT.”
Eloy Orozco pleads, “Could you start a little later? I get off at 5 and I would like to stop and get some beer and stuff to watch this.”
In free soloing, climbers ascend without the use of ropes, harnesses, or any other protective equipment to catch them in the event of a fall.
Watch it live on Netflix, Jan. 23, 2026, at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT.
View the trailer:
https://www.netflix.com/title/81987107
| | |
Everest Bucket Listers Depend on Sherpas
Sherpas navigate extreme conditions and treacherous pathways as they act as porters and guides for climbers summiting Everest. They put their lives on the line, often with little recognition.
Today, Everest is a booming multi-million-dollar high altitude industry with guided climbs stretching into six-figure sums, according to CBS News 60 Minutes correspondent Cecilia Vega who with her production crew were among the 40,000 people to trek to Everest Base Camp in 2025.
The commercialization has brought wealth and opportunity to Nepalese Sherpas.
“We know we come from zero. We’re nobody in this world and created something for ourselves.” – A poignant comment from Nima Rinji Sherpa, a 19-year-old Sherpa featured in the Dec. 21, 2026, piece.
Watch the 26-min. segment here:
https://youtu.be/B2y1FFP87i8?si=TrUAWYl0nSLG3eCJ
| | |
Nothing wrong with adventure tourism,
but they’re hardly true mountaineers. (Photo by Lakpa Sherpa)
| |
False Summits
Back in the day, the term “false summit” meant a place that, from lower down on a mountain, looked like the top but wasn’t. It was just an optical illusion. “Once a climber reached that misleading place, he or she would see another higher point just behind it. In other words, keep on slogging. It was annoying, but hey, that was just part of mountaineering,” writes Jim Clash of Forbes.com (Dec. 6).
Nowadays, in this age of participation trophies and misleading social media, false summits assume new meaning, Clash believes. Cruises use the term “expedition”; the rich call themselves “astronauts” after a short but expensive up-and-down jaunt on a rocket; and submersible passengers are labeled “mission specialists.”
“There is nothing wrong with adventuring. It broadens the horizons of the average Joe. But be realistic about what you’re doing, and don’t insult the Sir Edmund Hillary’s, Don Walsh’s and Buzz Aldrin’s of the world who did real firsts for science, duty to country and to push mankind ahead with new learning,” Clash writes.
“Let’s get real people, and call adventure tourism what it is. Nothing shameful about that. And let’s get back to the old-school definition of what having the right stuff means. We need more honesty and fact checking in today’s look-at-me world of influencers and social media.”
Read the story here:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimclash/2025/12/06/false-summits-applies-to-more-than-mountains-in-overdone-social-media/
| | |
Electrical engineer and tinkerer Steve Samson, now 75,
worked for Kodak on the first digital camera, originally weighing eight pounds.
"Well, you know, I was raised on Star Trek, and all the good ideas come from Star Trek,”
he tells the BBC. (Photo: George Eastman Museum)
| | |
A Toaster with a Lens
Expedition photography has come a long way from Herbert Ponting’s 7x5-inch Soho Reflex camera for stills, and the Prestwich 35mm cinematograph (movie) camera he used during Robert Falcon Scott's Terra Nova Expedition (1910-1913).
The same goes for Frank Hurley’s kit when he shot Ernest Shackleton's Endurance expedition (1914-17). State of the art equipment back then was bulky, heavy and temperamental.
Move forward 60 years to 1975, when electrical engineer and tinkerer Steve Samson at the company that made Kodak film, took the first picture on a (barely) handheld digital camera. Despite pushback from Eastman Kodak's managers who considered a filmless camera a huge threat to lucrative products such as their Instamatic cameras, photography would never be the same again, writes Stephen Dowling of the BBC (Dec. 7).
It's a fascinating read:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20251205-how-the-handheld-digital-camera-was-born?ocid=global_future_rss
EXPEDITION MARKETING
| | |
Attn. Flerfers: Want to Own Columbia Sportswear? Prove the Earth is Flat
In a creative and amusing marketing campaign, CEO Tim Boyle of Columbia Sportswear has offered to give away the company to a lucky “flerfer.”
Yes, flerfer, slang for “flat-earther.”
The Columbia Expedition Impossible project will award the winner copiers, forklifts, cubicles, inventory, whiteboards, office plants, the corporate HQ lobby, even a stuffed beaver. The works.
The stunt is part of Columbia’s marketing campaign, using humor and satire to spark global attention and online debate. There’s just one catch: the rules state that to qualify, authentic photographic evidence must show “a visible, physical end to the planet Earth. We’re talking infinite sheer drop, abyssal void, clouds cascading into infinity.”
So, no cliff faces, no glaciers – only Earth suddenly becoming space.
The exact terms say that if you do prove the Earth is flat, the assets you’ll be given are limited to a value of $100k.
“Still, if you actually prove that the Earth is flat, the specifics of your cash reward are going to be the least of everyone’s concerns,” posts the site ebaumsworld.com.
It’s a good reminder that sometimes humor is the most effective way to make a point, especially in today’s troubled (and presumably round) world.
Learn more:
https://www.columbia.com/expedition-impossible.html
Watch the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxJOAsTMC6w
| | Jeff Hessel with Tang. Buzz Aldrin was not a fan of the fruit drink mix. | | |
Senior Adults Learn About Space Spinoffs
Say what you will about Florida retirement communities, but guest speakers are sometimes quite stellar. Many presentations benefit from a local population of former Kennedy Space Center employees, as we learned recently while visiting friends at Valencia Isles, an active 55+ community of 793 single-family homes in Boynton Beach.
The Dec. 22 talk we attended was led by Jeff Hessel who began working at Cape Canaveral in 1968 during the height of the Space Race and the time of the Apollo Program. He was selected by NASA to become an official Solar System Ambassador and was a keynote speaker at the 50th Space Congress (SpaceCOM) in Orlando in 2024.
It was show & tell time as Hessel spoke to about 40 retirees about “Space Spinoffs: Things We Use Every Day.” Highlights were Astronaut Ice Cream, Fisher Space Pen (see EN, May 2024), Michael Phelps' iconic LZR Racer swimsuit, GPS, Lasik surgery, Mylar blankets, LED lights, radial tires, invisible braces, and wireless headsets.
“Space exploration isn’t just about rockets and astronauts walking on the moon. We owe a lot to these everyday innovations,” Hessel said.
As for Tang, which was launched in 1959, the fruit drink mix was not invented for the space program but became closely associated with NASA and U.S. human spaceflight. Still, Buzz Aldrin was not a fan, according to TMZ.com. In 2013, he was famously quoted as saying “Tang sucks.” (https://tinyurl.com/BuzzTang)
Now he tells us.
Learn more:
www.spacetalkswithjeffhessel.com, https://technology.nasa.gov
WEB WATCH
| | Roman Dial, Ph.D., author, The Adventurer's Son: A Memoir (Mariner Books, 2021) (Photo: Colin Arisman) | | |
Get Dialed in About Threats to the Alaskan Wilderness
Arctic Alchemy is powerful new documentary from Alaskan filmmakers Colin Arisman and Zeppelin Zeerip that follows renowned adventurer and climate scientist Dr. Roman Dial on a 112-mile research expedition through the Alaskan Brooks Range – one of the planet’s last great wildernesses – at a moment when the region faces unprecedented industrial and environmental threats.
Roman Dial, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus at Alaska Pacific University, is a pioneering outdoorsman based in Alaska, where he's made full-length traverses by foot, ski, pedal, and paddle of the Brooks and Alaska Ranges. Guided by Dial’s decades of backcountry research, the film reveals the fragile beauty of an ecosystem under mounting pressure and the resilience required to protect it.
Stream the 29-min. film on the Kahtoola YouTube channel:
https://tinyurl.com/GetDialed
BUZZ WORDS
Everesting
A term adopted by cyclists for a climbing challenge in which their two-wheeled ascents replicate the 29,029-ft. ascent of Mt. Everest. (Source: Wall Street Journal, Nov. 13, 2025)
DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS
| | |
This is Keith Cowing. (left)
(Right) This is a cowling – a vintage C-97 Stratoliner engine cowling painted to represent a 1943 8th Air Force P-47 cowling with custom nose art. ($2,000, Djangostudios.com).
| | |
Cowing is no Cowling
EN, which is 100 percent human content, can still hallucinate from time to time.
Such was the case last month when we misspelled Keith Cowing’s last name as "Cowling." Cowing is an American astrobiologist, former NASA employee, and the editor of the American space program blog NASAWatch.com.
A “cowling” on the other hand, is the removable cover of a vehicle or aircraft engine. It’s usually hard to mix up the two. We bad.
EDITOR’S NOTE
| | |
EN Enters the 21st Century with its First Facebook Page
"What hath god wrought?" tapped Samuel F. B. Morse when he sent the first telegraph in 1844.
That’s how we feel as we enter the 21st century with our first Facebook page.
Want to share news with the editorial staff of Expedition News? Comment on a past story? Find a sponsor? Join an expedition? Throw a brick or two? Back when we started in 1994, our distribution relied upon fax machines and U.S. snail mail, so this is a vast improvement.
Fire away. Join the cool kids’ table here:
https://tinyurl.com/ExpedNewsFB
| | 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
Add your comments to the new Expedition News Facebook page: https://tinyurl.com/ExpedNewsFB
| | | | |
