A 76-year-old lung cancer survivor from Harlem, Barbara Hillary, is setting out on a last degree North Pole expedition next month (where one flies in and skies the last degree of latitude, or 60 nautical miles).
"My father died when I was one. I was raised by a Black woman in Harlem who had no resources except a determination to not let anything stop her from being a role model of a value system that held high respect for one’s parents and other adults. When I reflect, these where hard times, yet we never felt poor. I believe mental poverty is a self affected condition that feeds upon it self. If I have emerged as person of some merit then I am indebted to my mother who paved a very rough road to enable me to have a better journey in life."
{ Filed under Other expeditions on March 22nd, 2007 | 5 Comments }
You know you're living in the 21st century when you find that Sir Ranulph Fiennes is on MySpace.
I'm 63 years old. I'm terrified of heights. I've had a double heart bypass. This March I will be climbing the North Face of the Eiger. Why? Well, I've been an explorer for more than 25 years, but this is my challenge of a lifetime. The North Face is 6,000ft of vertical rock and ice. It's claimed the lives of 50 climbers since the first ascent in 1938 and is notorious for rockfalls, avalanches and unstable weather.
Brilliant.
{ Filed under Other expeditions on March 15th, 2007 | 2 Comments }
1) The soundtrack to the SOUTH documentary? Music from two Norwegian dudes, Terje Isungset and Per Jørgensen, recorded in an igloo using instruments made of ice. I like the first track, 'Mountain'. (Via The Morning News.)
2) The Road to Beijing. As a teenager, Alex Vero weighed 17 stone (238lbs or 108kg) and was heavily asthmatic. He ran his first marathon a few years later in 4hrs 21mins. Now he's aiming to qualify for the Beijing Olympics marathon (which will mean running sub 2:15 in next year's London Marathon). Incredibly, he's pretty much on track. He ran a 1:15 half-marathon last month and you can track his progress on his site. I think this is inspirational stuff, but I'd seem to be in a minority, as Alex has copped twelve pages of mostly insults and abuse from a popular running forum.
3) There's an exhibition about polar bears at the Horniman Museum in London.
{ Filed under Miscellany on March 13th, 2007 | 2 Comments }
Ben Saunders is the youngest person to ski solo to the North Pole and holds the record for the longest solo Arctic journey by a Briton.