|
October 2026 – Volume Thirty-Two, Number Ten
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.
| | JBS and his Scientific Exploration Society team rebuilt the Manzano Bridge in Corcovado National Park on Costa Rica's Osa Peninsula in late 2025. They used sustainable Producol recycled plastic planks manufactured from beach waste, ocean plastic, hospital waste, and shredded old Nicaraguan banknotes. | | |
TURNING 90 HASN’T SLOWED
COLONEL JOHN BLASHFORD-SNELL CBE
This month, Colonel John Blashford-Snell CBE, one of the world’s most distinguished and relentless explorers, celebrates his 90th birthday as he looks back on a career that involved leading more than 100 expeditions, including the first navigation of Ethiopia’s Blue Nile, the first vehicle crossing of the Darien Gap, the first drive from Alaska to Cape Horn, and the exploration of nearly the entire Congo River, with many ventures focused on scientific, medical, and environmental objectives.
Following his retirement from the Army in 1991, JBS continued his commitment to youth development through projects such as The Door in Liverpool, which has helped over 40,000 disadvantaged young people. His humanitarian work also focused on delivering a grand piano to the Wai Wai people of Guyana, helping raise $2 million for rainforest conservation, and providing an ambulance boat to a remote Amazon tribe.
In 1969, he co-founded the Scientific Exploration Society (SES) and went on to create major international youth programs, including Operation Drake and Operation Raleigh, now known as Raleigh International; over 58,000 young men and women have benefitted from this unique program.
A resident of Motcombe, Dorset, England, he is also passionate about the environment, especially the misuse of plastic. Several of his recent expeditions raised awareness about the benefits of recycled plastic. JBS is a supporter of the Flip Flopi project (theflipflopi.com) which employs discarded flip flops on the hulls of South Africa dhows.
In November 2025, JBS traveled with SES to the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica, where the team replaced an essential rotting wood bridge with recycled plastic, including shredded decommissioned Nicaraguan plastic currency.
Watch the documentary here:
https://tinyurl.com/RecycledPlasticBridge
| | JBS believes explorers need to support the local communities they visit. | | |
“Wherever I travel, I feel it’s the duty of an explorer to help the local people there.” His projects often involve bringing dentists along to extract teeth and provide fillings. His team uses puppets as “bribes” to encourage youngsters to submit to a dental exam.
In September 2027, he’s planning a grand reunion to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Operations Drake and Raleigh at the Royal Geographical Society in London.
One of his favorite countries is Mongolia where in 2028 he hopes to deploy up to 40 camera traps in the Gobi Desert of southwestern Mongolia to study the critically endangered Gobi bear.
“I hope I can still ride a horse by then,” he tells EN having recently recovered from an ankle replacement.
The work of JBS reveals a powerful truth: exploration must serve as a classroom for future generations, teaching them the vital skills needed to safeguard our world.
Learn more about his extraordinary career:
http://www.johnblashfordsnell.org.uk
EXPEDITION NOTES
| | |
Jon Krakauer addresses American Himalayan Foundation
supporters on Sept. 10, 2026, in Denver.
| | |
American Himalayan Foundation Takes Up the Slack in Nepal
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) was shut down and its independent operations ceased on July 1, 2025, following sweeping cutbacks and restructuring ordered by the second Trump administration. That left a massive aid vacuum that hit Nepal hard.
“The American Himalayan Foundation (AHF) stepped in to fill critical gaps … and help avoid further hardship during an already difficult time,” according to author Jon Krakauer, chair of the nonprofit based in San Francisco.
During an AHF event at The North Face headquarters in Denver on September 10, the 45-year-old group shared an update on their work, providing emergency support and relief to affected communities of the recent glacial collapse, according to Tenzing Norbu’s son Norbu Tenzing, president of AHF.
“Seems like Nepal never gets a break,” he said. “We remain committed to standing with them for the long term as they begin the difficult work of rebuilding their homes and their lives.”
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the 1996 disaster that inspired Krakauer’s bestselling book, Into Thin Air (Villard Books, 1997). (See EN, June 2026).
Krakauer said, “After the disaster I had survivor’s guilt. And then got rich. It was the worst thing to happen to me. And then I met AHF. They helped me turn tragedy into something good, including helping the Sherpas who saved my life.”
The foundation, established in 1981 by the late private equity investor and philanthropist Richard C. Blum, works with local partners to provide targeted program funding for people in need in the Himalaya. Its mission is to bring shelter, safety, education, health, and opportunity to people in the Himalaya, and create enduring, positive change in their lives.
Consider donating here:
https://www.himalayan-foundation.org/donate/crisis-response
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming … if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
– Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919). "Man in the Arena" quote from his Citizenship in a Republic speech at the Paris Sorbonne on April 23, 1910.
| | |
Interestingly, on his Explorers Club application dated March 26, 1915, it was only at the end of the third paragraph of qualifications, does he mention that his "positions" include "President of the United States."
Look closely: his date of birth is off by 30 years.
“The 1888 (year of birth) was written with a blue ballpoint pen which was not created until 1938. It was clearly written by someone who had access to this application sometime after it came into Club possession in 1915,” Club Archivist and Curator of Research Collections, Olivia Dodd, tells EN.
“It could have just been an error by a past librarian or anyone with access to the document. Their intentions are lost with time.”
EXPEDITION FOCUS
| | Steven R. Kutcher never met a bug he didn’t like. | | |
Entomologist is the Bug Man of Hollywood
If you’ve seen a bug, an insect in a commercial, movie or music video, very likely that’s the work of Hollywood bug wrangler Steven R. Kutcher, 82, of Arcadia, California. The spider that dropped on Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man was lowered down by Kutcher. He doesn’t train bugs, but he makes them do just what directors want for blockbusters such as Jurassic Park, Arachnophobia, and James and the Giant Peach.
Kutcher has had a fascination with nature and insects since he was a small child collecting fireflies in the famed New York Catskill Mountains. (Editor note: He’s no relation to the Borscht Belt’s famed Kutsher’s Hotel, now defunct.) Besides wrangling insects for the camera, Kutcher is also an insect educator, environmentalist, lecturer, writer, and an entomology consultant.
| | Steven Kutcher and tarantula fan. | | |
He’s taught classes from grade school to graduate level for 45 years part-time, using a better understanding of entomology to help people overcome their fear of insects, provide education about the natural world, entertain, and help private industry solve their insect problems.
Last month, he was a featured speaker at the Colorado La Junta Tarantula Fest about an hour’s drive east of Pueblo. Each fall, male tarantulas emerge from their burrows across the nearby Comanche National Grassland, in a mating‑expedition that draws visitors to spot these skittering bachelors in action.
The festival features a hairy legs contest, tarantula mural art (see image), eight-legged races, a screening of the cult classic Arachnophobia (1990), and lectures, including one by Kutcher who was asked by a young child in the audience, “Why do like to scare us?”
| | Nightmares are made of this – La Junta goes all out once a year for these hairy giants. | | |
“I get to play with bugs and people pay me,” joked Kutcher, who calls himself a “small game hunter.”
An environmental artist, for two decades he has specialized in Bug Art – using insects as “living brushes.” In fact, his Bug Art has been displayed in museums, galleries, and publications.
An Ethiopian scorpion called Neobuthus kutcheri is a patronym in honor of Kutcher’s lifelong dedication to promoting insects and arachnids in education, arts and entertainment.
He tells EN, “When you understand arthropods you have a greater understanding of the world.”
Learn more:
https://bugsaremybusiness.com/
View his filmography:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_R._Kutcher
MEDIA MATTERS
| | Someday safari vehicles like this diesel-powered Toyota LandCruiser will be electrified (taken in June 2026 at Rhino River Lodge in South Africa). | | |
EVs Are Transforming Outdoor Adventure
One way not to photograph animals is to approach them in a gas- or diesel-guzzling safari vehicle. Maybe a bit unfair, but we immediately think about the noisy steam-powered African Queen in the 1951 film of the same name featuring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn.
Jen Rose Smith writes in the Wall Street Journal (Aug. 16) that tour operators are increasingly turning to EV’s.
If you’re a twitcher (i.e. obsessive birdwatcher) traveling thousands of miles to add a violet-backed starling to your life list, trailing a plume of diesel is not helpful.
“Battery-powered vehicles are changing adventure worldwide,” Smith writes, citing quiet solar-powered boats in Botswana, electric snowmobiles in Lapland, tundra buggies in Churchill, Manitoba, and electric pangas (open hull fishing boat powered by outboard) in the Galapagos.
Read the story here:
https://tinyurl.com/EVSafaris
| | Screenshot of Bob Ballard on CBS Sunday Morning last month. | | |
Deep Despair
Watch this CBS Sunday Morning clip from Sept. 20. Oceanographer and explorer Bob Ballard, 84, explains he was inspired by scenes of Captain Nemo from Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea walking on the bottom of the ocean.
After locating the wreck of the Titanic in 1985, he jokes that his own mother was unimpressed by his discovery of “that rusty old boat.”
Ballard was greatly impressed by the large numbers of shoes seen on the ocean floor still in the position of where Titanic victims had sunk. “You don’t touch something like that.”
The segment focuses on the sinking of a private sailboat by a sperm whale in 1972, forcing a couple to spend a desperate 118 days at sea without a radio and with limited food.
Ballard adds there are three million shipwrecks still undiscovered. Telepresence will help science discover more and more of them as technology improves.
Watch the piece here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5SgPvnXpro
| | |
Trolls brawl over which of these
Artemis II astronauts were farthest from earth.
| |
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who’s the Farthest of Them All?
On Monday, April 6, 2026, six days into the Artemis II mission, NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen surpassed the record for human spaceflight’s farthest distance from Earth, which was previously set by the Apollo 13 mission in 1970.
All four members of the Artemis II crew – Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen – shared the exact same milestone, traveling together inside the Orion spacecraft (Integrity) to reach a maximum distance of approximately 252,756 miles from Earth as they looped around the far side of the Moon.
Then internet trolls, god bless ‘em, did what they do best – they picked it apart, asking, “yeah but who was the farthest of them all?”
While commander Reid Wiseman jokingly mentioned during a broadcast that he tried to float to the other end of the cabin at the exact peak of their trajectory only to be "clawed down" by his crewmates, any micro-differences in distance caused by moving around inside the capsule amounted to only a few feet.
Christina Koch discusses this online nano-debate during her interview last month with Brian Williams, host of the Netflix video podcast We’re Back.
Watch it on Netflix.com.
EXPEDITION FUNDING
| | |
Va-Va-Voom! A sexy marmot with bedroom eyes strikes a pose
in Rocky Mountain National Park.
| | |
Marmot Researchers Turn to OnlyFans Seeking $75,000
In this era of government cutbacks, some researchers are doing whatever it takes to raise funds. If that means posting attractive marmots on the adult entertainment site OnlyFans, so be it.
After receiving approval from the naughty age 18-plus site, researchers from UCLA conducting research at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory near Crested Butte, Colorado, launched @OnlyMarms in hopes of raising $75,000 to support graduate students.
The team created a G-rated page sharing wholesome, "uncensored" footage of rodents scurrying, burrowing, and hanging out on rocks. Occasionally, when the marmots fight, it inches up to a PG rating.
So far they raised $5,500, minus an OnlyFans cut of 20% Crypto donations are over $14,000.
The Marmot Project received decades of stable support from the National Science Foundation – until recently, when the project faced the possibility that one of the world's great long-term biological datasets might be forced to stop.
“I’m spinning out of control in the field facing various funding cuts,” says UCLA professor Dan Blumstein in a promotional video. He’s co-director of the 64-year study of yellow-bellied marmots at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, in Gothic, Colorado.
The project is the world’s second-longest continuous study of individually identified mammals, behind only Jane Goodall's work with chimpanzees.
OnlyMarms was both a fundraiser and a statement: Is this really how America wants its scientists to fund basic research? Thousands followed the marmots, the story traveled around the world and supporters contributed money to keep the research going. The campaign has demonstrated that the public cares about science.
Have doubts about the necessity of deep cuts in field research? Think about poor furry marmots being forced to commercialize and objectify their yellow-bellied bodies in the name of science.
Don't let American science depend on OnlyFans.
Sign the petition here:
https://onlymarms.movements.mov/pet/dont-let-american-science-depend-on-onlyfans
| | |
Apply Now for 2027-2028 Matthew Henson Scholarship
The Matthew Henson Scholarship honors the legacy of polar explorer Matthew Henson (1866-1955) by inspiring people of color – particularly emerging outdoor guides or people with current positions or future goals of leadership in the outdoor industry – to embrace cold weather adventures, and to build the necessary skill set to thrive (and not just survive) during cold weather expedition travel.
This two-year scholarship, awarded annually by PolarExplorers, provides two consecutive years of fully subsidized participation on PolarExplorers' Polar Shakedown Training. The first year focuses on skill development and an overview of cold weather expedition travel. The second year dives into leadership development and hands-on experience guiding in the extreme cold.
This scholarship is open to all people of color who are passionate about wilderness travel and outdoor leadership, who aspire to have a career in the outdoor industry, and who are looking to increase their skill set to include cold weather camping and leadership.
Application deadline: December 1, 2026.
For more information visit:
https://www.polarexplorers.com/matthew-henson-scholarship
| | A recent visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, the world-renowned marine conservation center and public aquarium about 120 miles south of San Francisco, turned into a field day for the editor of our Buzz Words section. Two particularly interesting terms were: | A sea turtle feeding target. | |
Target Feeding
How do you prevent a green sea turtle, for instance, from having its food snatched away from aggressive tankmates? You train them to respond to a specific symbol, then feed them their exact prescribed nutrition. Compared to broadcast feeding, this also reduces excess waste and helps control algae and nutrient spikes.
See an explanation here on the aquarium’s Facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1EQPbQummT/
| | Whalefall exhibit at Monterey Bay Aquarium. | | |
Whalefall
When a dead whale sinks, a new community springs to life. Food is scarce on the seafloor. When a dead whale lands on the mud, a new community moves in and the feast begins. Hungry sharks, crabs, and worms come to dine on a buffet of blubber, baleen, and bones.
Whalefall also happens to be the title of a new theatrical horror release from 20th Century Studios and Imagine Entertainment about the fate of a young SCUBA diver who is swallowed Jonah-like by an 80-ft. sperm whale. It’s based on the popular 2023 novel of the same name by Daniel Kraus and comes out this month. We may have to miss this one, but you can watch the trailer here:
https://tinyurl.com/whalefall2026
| | |
Want advice for your favorite STEM student on how to draw a shark? The Monterey folks have you covered:
https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/animals-the-ocean/crafts-printables/how-draw-shark
(Source: Catherine Traub, Senior Aquarist, Monterey Bay Aquarium)
The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program helps consumers and businesses choose seafood that’s fished or farmed in ways that support a healthy ocean. Its warnings include avoiding uncertified farmed salmon, uncertified Atlantic cod, and tilapia from China. See their green, yellow and red ratings at SeafoodWatch.org.
ON THE HORIZON
| | |
GLEX: Ignition, Coimbra, Portugal, Oct 29-31, 2026
Dr. Kelsey Young, who serves as the NASA Artemis Science Flight Operations Lead delivering science training to both astronauts and mission operations personnel, is one of the speakers at GLEX: Ignition, Oct. 29-31, 2026, in Coimbra, Portugal.
The 2026 edition of the Global Exploration Summit (GLEX), brings together explorers, scientists, and storytellers from around the world to chart the future of exploration and celebrate the shared human pursuit of discovery.
Tickets start at $100. For more information:
https://www.glexsummit.com/
| | 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).
Purchase 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
| | | | |
