The Adventure of a Lifetime

"If you think of a soccer field and you put that soccer field on its end, you have this pit going down."
"Think about this giant circular or oval hole that just goes down and down and down. It is truly amazing."
Catherine Hickson, geologist, vulcanologist

"I've had some incredible caving trips over the years."
"The first thing that struck me was the volume and noise of the raging water. I had a radio to maintain surface contact but soon realized the max[imum] volume would not be enough to overcome the sound of the raging river."
"It was a real privilege. These opportunities are quite literally once in a lifetime."
Lee Hollis, caver, British Columbia

A remote location in northwestern British Columbia is home to a  huge, unexplored pit. Photo: Catherine Hickson

The presence of an immense cave in a hitherto-unknown location (location still kept secret to deter adventurers) was discovered last April by a helicopter crew flying over a remote area of northern British Columbia within a huge nature preserve, Wells Gray Provincial Park, not far from Alberta's Jasper National Park, on a routine count of caribou by the province's Ministry of Environment and Climate Change. A scientist in the helicopter happened to notice an unusual geological formation and noted its presence. Soon afterward a small team of geologists returned to establish the presence of a vast cave.

Archaeological surveyor John Pollack, part of the initial exploratory team, described the cave as being of "national significance" in a paper he co-wrote about the finding. He was instrumental in recruiting veteran caver Lee Hollis to explore the cave. That would mean lowering himself into the unknown deep, dark depths of the pit to encounter what he would and in the process initial observations would be made of the cave's features. Hollis has had years of experience in the profession over a period of three decades.

His subterranean explorations have taken him to Thailand, Ireland, Wales and Spain, and he explored the interior of Gouffre Berger in France, thought at one time to represent the world's deepest cave. He spent three days in that cave, in 1993. More latterly, he was involved in discovering a previously-unseen lava tube on an island in Hawaii. This newly-discovered cave, named Sarlacc's Pit (in fond deference to Star Wars) takes the prize for the most unusually-sized cave he has yet encountered.

On a late summer day in September Hollis helicoptered into Wells Grey Park at the invitation of John Pollack, for an initial exploration of the enormous pit. The 46-year-old cave explorer was the first person to descend into the pit. Its estimated dimensions of 100 metres long by 60 metres wide qualify it as representing the largest cave in Canada. Hollis, Pollack and Hickson along with two other researchers overflew mountains and lakes to finally reach the colossal system's site.

The entrance to a newly discovered cave in British Columbia’s Wells Gray Provincial Park is seen in an undated handout photo. Handout / Tuya Terra Geo Corp., Catherine Hickson

Once at the site, Hollis hooked his rope to one side of the cave entrance in preparation of rappelling down within the yawning pit as far as he could. In descending gradually, he encountered a ferocious waterfall coursing voluminously down through the cave to his right, with a cursory measurement of 61 metres in height. The steep descent, with the slope of the cave ranging from 45 to 75 degrees, saw loose rocks posing a hazard as they threatened to tumble from above.

The caver ducked under a large snow plug three to five metres thick at the bottom of the waterfall, in an effort to ascertain how much deeper the cave descended into the earth. Landing on a small ledge 75 metres under ground level he came across an underground river so monstrously raucous he was incapable of hearing any other sound, including that of his radio for contact with those above ground awaiting word from him. This was the point at which he began his long ascent and exit from the cave.

The search to understand all the geological features of the cave has only just begun. Hollis and the research team have plans for a return in the coming year to engage in additional reconnaissance of the immense subterranean area. A full expedition is being planned to take place in 2020. It took the caver a full hour to descend to the level of the river, and another hour on the ascent, using a route known only to himself.

Caver Lee Hollis (left) and archaeological surveyor John Pollack were part of the first research team to explore an enormous cave discovered in March 2018 in B.C.’s Wells Gray Provincial Park. Courtesy of Lee Hollis

Underwater Cave Exploration Dilemma

"In the end, I thought they wouldn't find me because Guillem couldn't get out."
"He didn't know the caves well and I was scared he would end up without air."
"We are used to being alone, but to stay in a pocket without being able to leave and nobody finding you is a diver's worst nightmare."
"[The water was] brackish, but quite sweet."
Xisco Gracia, speleologist, Spain

"I think they made the right decisions and that's why [Gracia] is still with us."
"They could have tried to stretch out the remaining oxygen [between them], but surely that would have been suicide and they would have both died."
Enrique Ballesteros, civil police underwater task force

Divers spent days looking for the man (Photo: rtve.es)

People can get lost or trapped in the most desolate, isolated places on Earth, brought there by their immense sense of curiosity, of scientific enquiry, or simply the adventure inherent in reaching those inhospitable places where nature never really intended people to inveigle themselves, and where to survive the elements and the geology represents a feat of impossible endurance. There are vast, empty deserts and impossible heights of the world's tallest mountains, underground caves that beckon spelunkers, as well as great white frozen wastes of permafrost-covered land -- and there also are underwater caves.

It was underwater caverns with their labyrinthine tunnels that the power of water on rock has etched out over the vast space of time and erosion, that motivated Professor Xisco Gracia, an experienced speleologist and his friend and diving partner Guillem Mascaro, to indulge their curiosity. These underwater caves were discovered in the 1800s, with their three kilometers of tunnels, not all of which, given their remoteness and difficulty in approaching, have been explored. An irresistible lure for a specializing scientist.

And while it is perfectly true that such resolute, enquiring minds are prepared to take great risks to fulfill their search for answers to the great mysteries of life and the natural world, none among them deliberately gamble with risks that might turn out to be inimical to the continuation of their lives. Yet this is just what happened to the pair, 40 metres underground, researching the undersea topography of the Cova de sa Piqueta in Manacor, Spain, when they were jolted by the realization that their guide wire had snapped.

A swift response to attempt to fix the guide wire took so much time that their oxygen store had been almost depleted. Insufficient oxygen to allow both men to return to the surface became their existential dilemma. Leading them to make a choice. And that decision was made by 55-year-old Dr. Gracia who urged his partner to return to the surface with the use of the remaining oxygen and he would himself await his eventual return with a rescue team. Dr. Gracia assured his friend that he would survive by remaining in a cavity in the cave that had an air pocket.

Little did they both realize at the time the decision was made that the one left behind would be stranded for fully 60 hours, unable to move from the place where some oxygen was available to  keep him alive. Without food to sustain him, Dr. Gracia drank from a thin spread of murky water. But the air that he was breathing was heavily laced with carbon dioxide, which weakened him, affected his brain, resulting in hallucinations and the loss of much of his executive function. After awhile Dr. Gracia was convinced that his diving partner hadn't reached the surface.

He had been unable to sleep since the poor air quality and extreme humidity bore heavily on him. All he could do was remain, uncomfortable and wet, in the pocket of the cave. When hypothermia threatened, Dr. Garcia clambered over nearby jagged rocks to a site close to the thin water pool which provided him with potable water. And in that place no light, only darkness prevailed. He had flashlights, using them when he had to source the water. And he resigned himself to the inevitable, that he would never be found, and there his life would end, just where he was.



Yet, his friend had not been lost, he had reached the surface and alerted authorities who prepared to mount a rescue operation by the civil police. However, rescue divers, despite being armed with precise instructions provided by Mr. Mascaro where they would find Dr. Gracia, were held back by conditions that turned the water opaque, making vision extremely difficult; if they were unable to see where they were swimming they placed themselves in a situation where they would themselves become lost inside the labyrinth of tunnels.

A few days later they managed to reach the cave and thought they knew where Dr. Gracia was.

They drilled into the cave wall hoping to deliver oxygen and food to Dr. Gracia, before discovering they hadn't found him after all. But from the cavity where Dr. Garcia was located, he felt he could hear faint sounds and that raised his expectations and his hope for rescue. The sounds stopped echoing through the cave walls when the divers realized they were not in the right place for a rescue, leaving Dr. Garcia deflated and resigned, that if a search had been underway, it had also been called off and he was now, once again, and finally, on his own.

Visibility improved, however, and the 60 people and more that comprised the rescue team waited another 15 hours, then set out again. Two divers finally discovered where Dr. Gracia was -- locating him 900 metres from the entrance of the cave.To return to the surface Dr. Gracia had no option but to swim for an hour and a half, through his exhaustion, but the canister oxygen the rescuers had brought along had the effect of "charging the batteries", enabling him to forge ahead.

The video that the civil police took shows the rescue team pulling Dr. Gracia from the depths of the cave he was trapped in, back to the surface. At that point, the rescued man was able to walk independently on his own two feet around midnight, when the surface had been reached. A short hospital stay ensued, during which Dr. Gracia's condition was diagnosed as fit and well recovered from his ordeal.

Xisco Gracia was rescued (Photo: Twitter/@112IllesBalears)

Exhale and Inch Your Way Up

Experienced tall-peak mountain climbers know to look out for crevasses. They know well, some from personal experience, and some from mourning the deaths of fellow climbers and acquaintances that a misstep leading out of a relaxation of diligence could result in a fall into a crevice, so deep, dark, cold and closely embracing they will never see light and life again. Some have fallen and managed to dangle from a rope long enough for companion climbers to rescue them. On the odd occasion some have managed through sheer physical stamina and strength to rescue themselves.

Sometimes, a fascination for the unknown and a relentless search for dangerous and exciting experiences end in tragedy.

Seth Rowe, 30, a married father of two young children yet in their infancy, was one of the lucky ones. He had his experience, one that will surely be seared into his memory, and through sheer serendipity, lives to tell his story and to resume being a father to his two young children. It is more possible that he could have been one of those people who mysteriously manage to 'drop off the face of the Earth', for all anyone knows what happens to them when they're never again seen, but Fortune smiled on him.

"I had gone into one [crevice] and looked around and thought it was pretty cool. I always keep an eye out for [First Nations] artifacts … I would love to find an arrowhead, or anything, and these spots that I go to - I'm skinny, and I can get into places where others can't. Unfortunately, nobody could on this one."

"I just plummeted. My strength just left me. I couldn't feel my hands anymore, and when you can't feel you're hands, you can't grab the rocks."

"It pinched in so quick it actually brought me to a stop right at the ground. Intermittently I had been yelling, 'hello, help' … I could hear things moving around, and it wasn't human sounds, and I'm bleeding and hurt and started to get kind of worried." "I knew I had no way to defend myself. Ever put a ring on your finger and it won't come off? That's the same thing. I was pretty screwed."
"I've been in some pretty nasty spots in my scope of work. [Death could have ensued] I just shut that part of my brain off."
"Every last bit of it [his extraction from the narrow rocky crevice] was pain. I knew going up was going to be excruciating, and I got through it by just thinking, 'It's got to be done, exhale as far as you can and slowly inch your way up'."
"These guys [firefighters and mine rescue teams] saved my life, and they had to work and work and work to do it."
Seth Rowe, Glen Huron, Ontario

Clearview Fire Department

Out with some friends to hike the the Bruce Trail on Saturday morning in a section of the Nottawasaga Bluffs Conservation Area, they were reconnoitering some of the fissures in the Niagara Escarpment. His friends decided to call it a day, but Rowe thought he would just go on to have another look at an area that he'd once before come across. One misstep was all it took, as he found himself slipping inexorably into a crevice. And he just kept slipping further in, the dripping cold dark walls closing around him, the light of day disappearing.

The process left him battered and bleeding, his skin on his back and chest badly abraded. And he felt cold, very cold, since at that depth, dark and hidden where sun and warmth do not intrude, there is still ice. His chin had struck the ledge as he fell, knocking his head back. He jammed his knees into the crevice in a vain effort to break the fall. He proceeded beyond a second tight spot, scrapping the skin off his chest and back when he fainally came to a stop after hitting the final tight spot.

He found himself mired, unable to grip his way up, some 20 metres under the ground; trapped in a narrow "pinchpoint" with barely room for his width to be accommodated; firmly caught in a trap he was unable to manoeuvre himself out of.

In total, he ended up in that tight enclosure, in the dark and the cold, for 22 hours. Life can seem so unfair; intrepid mountaineers travel thousands of miles from their homes to face the commanding siren call of nature and attempt to mount the world's tallest peaks. He was a mere few kilometres from his home in central Ontario, and had meant to be out for an afternoon hike, nothing more, in an environment he was fascinated with, and had become somewhat familiar with. 

He had seen a 'slit' in the forest floor. Curious, he approached closer, when the ground under his feet gave way and he plummeted into the hellhole he swiftly found himself in with no way to extricate himself. Hours passed and he began going into hypothermia with the shock of his fall, and the trauma of being wet and freezing, and sleep began to overtake him. Sleep is an enemy at this point; the 'little death' morphing into the 'big sleep'. And he was entombed; he would die and his skeleton would never be found, his family deprived of his presence.

Looking up at the dim appearance of surface light he thought he could see the form of an animal hovering at the entrance to his catacomb. He took inspiration from sighting it to try again to call for help. And then as it happened someone had been passing by and heard his dim voice. Gilbert McInnis had taken the wrong trail when suddenly he heard a faint "hello!" emanating from a gap in the ground. "It wasn't a loud voice ... it was kind of muffled", he said later.

The local Clearview Fire Department arrived at 8:30 p.m. and they were soon joined by firefighters from across the province, all acutely aware of just how complex the problem would be to extract a hypothermic man from an awkwardly inaccessible granite slit deep underground. Toronto firefighters hung from harnesses to chip relentlessly away at the granite walls by hand. First responders themselves were succumbing to hypothermia, crouching in the narrow crevice, attempting to persuade Rowe to remain awake.

After a while, dawn hours snaked by as the trapped man was slowly yanked up to freedom through the jagged, narrow gaps in the cold rock wall. The pain being experienced by the trapped man was so intense, with the previously sheared walls of his chest and back being abraded once again by his movement in reverse, that his screams of agony unnerved his rescuers who were forced to ignore his pain and to continue efforts to save his life.

He recalls having a conversation with a firefighter who had an Australian accent, who was trying to keep him from sleeping. "He asked if I came down with a helmet or any rope. I said no. [He said] that’s either incredibly brave, or incredibly stupid. He said, 'well, I hope this is not your last caving experience and you’ll be more careful in the future'. I said, 'Right now I’m not going into another cave again'."

"Where I came out was not where I went in. These caves have a million entrances, vertical fissures that run for miles. I’m always on the lookout for new ones – you can look for years, and you’d still be surprised at how many there are."

Victor Biro for National Post   Seth Rowe shows the abrasions on his back after being rescued from a granite crevice.

Youthful Exuberance and Cultural Offence

"I do believe they've not committed any offence in what they've done. They didn't knowingly offend the group of people. Obviously the disaster that happened, the earthquake is extremely unfortunate, but if that is believed locally to be the cause of the earthquake that's not something Lindsey or Danielle would have known about."
"They were super funny but they weren't necessarily ones to go streaking."
"It was a completely sensible photograph, nothing indecent."
Phillip Gourley, fellow backpacker

Facebook   Lindsey and Danielle Petersen. "AFTER 6+ months, the dynamic duo are reunited,” the caption reads.

"The guide warned them not to do so, but they replied: 'Stupid man, go to hell'. He could not stop them. They even took a group photo and a selfie. Then they dressed and returned to the backpacker lodge."
Malaysian newspaper report

Well, then, perhaps some Canadians do strange things. The writer of this blog decades ago climbing in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, ascended Moosilauke on several occasions. The first time with my husband and our three teen-age children, finding the summit bald and smoothly-surfaced in granite. It was a hot day, we intended to rest awhile before descending. I stripped to my underwear and splayed out on a large rounded boulder and sunbathed. True, we were the only hikers up there that day at that time, and it felt rather private. True, it was in the U.S. and who would object?

But in a Muslim-majority country to ascend a mountain with a guide leading a group, that's taking a chance. And it's a chance that some backpackers evidently decided out of a youthful spirit of joy, freedom and exuberance to take, thinking little obviously of the potential fall-out. A brother and a sister from Saskatchewan among the group now face court action as a result of their 'crime of obscenity'. They offended the spirit of the sacred Mount Kinabalu. The offence the spirit took at their flaunting of their nakedness caused it to shrug its shoulders in rage.

The result was an earthquake. And the result of the earthquake was the death of 18 mountaineers. Of course one must believe that mountains are sacred in the sense that spirits of godly virtue and powerful emotions inhabit them. Much as the Nepalese worship the mountains of the Himalayas and give offerings to appease the spirits or the gods and goddesses of the mountains before embarking on a commercial climbing season in the hopes that the geology and the weather will smile favourably upon them and fail to extract vengeance for insults and misdemeanors by causing death.

Malaysian investigating officer Asp Japri Abdul Halim from a police station in Sabah informed reporters that authorities would be holding the offenders of Mount Kinabalu for several days in Kepayan at which time the Native Courts will make a decision whether to proceed with charges. If the decision goes in favour of proceeding to lay criminal charges the backpackers could conceivably be looking toward up to three months in prison in Malaysia.



Before the Canadian brother and sister arrived in Malaysia they were backpacking elsewhere, and this is where they made friends with another backpacker, Phillip Gourley, who has expressed his belief that the two were completely innocent of intent to offend, but were victims of youthful zest in the happiness their surroundings invested them with. He had received a very favourable impression of the pair with whom he trekked in Indonesia and Bali as backpacking tourists.

The brother and sister, Lindsey and Danielle Petersen, uploaded Facebook photos of their mountain trek, proud of having summitted the 4,095-foot peak, the  highest mountain between the Himalayas and New Guinea. The group of ten young people had completed their hike in 30C heat, then stripped down to their underwear. In the photographs they had turned their backs to the camera. After the group photo was snapped, they dressed and thought little of their extravagant jubilation, carrying on to descend the peak.

Now, however, although they have been barred from exiting Malaysia, "They were pretty worried about the reaction of the media and how it was being portrayed", said their friend. The quote attributed to them by the Malaysian newspaper (above) is fairly absurd; expressing a version of events that suits public outrage. Still, that old adage, "When in Rome do as the Romans do", represented excellent advice thousands of years ago, and still presents as excellent warning to those who have fail to do their homework before embarking on a trip that will bring them in contact with another culture.

Facebook    The Malaysian government is stopping Lindsey and Danielle Petersen of Saskatchewan, from leaving the country for being part of a group of tourist who took naked photos of themselves at the top of Mount Kinabalu.

La Donna Delle Stelle"

"In only 140 characters [Twitter feed] she's able to represent, to explain in a simple way, the results of very important research."
Francesco Corfaro, Italian mission in Ottawa

"Most of the time we would be spinning! [On two-day flight to the International Space Station.] In fact when there are no dynamic operations [example: no need to fire the thrusters or the main engine], the Soyuz is put in gyroscopic stabilization with the solar panels pointed at the sun to maximize power generation."
"It's actually not the greatest things for the crew; any space sickness you're experiencing, the spinning is guaranteed to make it worse [or to give you symptoms, if you didn't have any]. But unless you actively stabilize the altitude with thrusters, the only way to keep a stable orientation is to rotate on an axis."
"I find [the Canadarm2] an object of intrinsic beauty, I'll confess. But it's of course intended as a tool of visualization and as an aid in the extensive brain gymnastics to come: mentally flipping camera images, predicting how the arm movement will look from different points of view, identifying the best camera combination to monitor clearances from structure, determining hand controller inputs in different co-ordinate frames, visualizing joint movements -- these are some of the tasks that are sure to keep your brain on its toes as you fly the arm."
Samantha Cristoforetti, Italian astronaut, on board the International Space Station, Space-to-you

Samantha Cristoforetti snaps photos of the Earth from orbit aboard the ISS.
ESA/NASA

She will speak of her fascination with space and space travel, her scientific and engineering interests to anyone who is interested in five languages, take your pick. She is a gifted scientist and a science popularizer. Two years in the United States, once as a high-schooler, the second year at a Texas Air Force base. She received her master's in engineering from Technische Universitat Munich. Four months of that degree were spent in France. And ten months of research at the Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology in Russia. She's practising Chinese, now as well.

To say that this 38 year old woman is accomplished is to understate the obvious. Apart from the distinction of being Italy's first woman in space, her academic degrees launched her into quite the career. She has experience as a fighter pilot, as a flight engineer, a scuba diver, and she is a bibliophile. Oh, and as a woman whose career trajectory has taken her where few have gone before, she is an obvious role model for young women who impatiently shunt aside compliments on their physical beauty, to focus on aspirations of rare accomplishment.

How many young woman of spectacular ambition, talent and beauty are capable of sending messages such as this one? Good night from #space. Buona notte dallo spazio.

Over two thousand of the photographs she has taken on this trip have been posted on flickr. She shoots both videos and stills, showcasing the northern lights, and landscapes of the Earth from distances and angles unique indeed from Space.  She teaches, while orbiting Earth, a formal physics lesson on gravitational pull on orbiting objects, with equations and floating baseballs, just to make the lesson all the more appealing and approachable to the ordinary mind.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield may have initiated a popular connection with the viewing public excited about space travel, inviting them into his temporary space-travel world while orbiting Earth, explaining the inexplicable [to most people], with a common touch, and giving his avid fans a view of what he himself treasured while in deep, dark space. And now, this extraordinary woman is doing the very same thing, entertaining and informing the public, casually and appealingly.

She, along with the other astronauts that team up in an international experience of ongoing exploration and experiments greets a sunrise and a sunset every 92 minutes, throughout the course of their "day" in Space. And each time she settles down for a well-earned rest from her duties and her communications, she sends the same message: "Good night from #space. Buona notte dallo spazio."

Arcane Evolutionary Mystique

"It really shows how tenacious life is. The possibilities are just beyond our prediction."
Professor Reed Scherer, micropaleontology, Northern Illinois University

"[When the research scientists saw the first fish they] started screaming and yelling and clapping. [By the time they saw fish repeatedly] we got to the point of, 'Oh, there's another fish', instead of, 'Oh my God! There's a fish'!"
Professor Ross Powell

You'd think these scientists had never seen a fish before. What could be more commonplace than fish, for heaven's sake, in the ocean? It's where anyone would expect to see them, after all. Fish, and any number of other aquatic creatures, from the size of walruses to the minuscule proportions of bacteria thriving in salt water. We know the world's oceans are thriving with various types of aquatic life. New species being identified all the time. And complaints about catches of the most popular types of table-fish diminishing.

And some countries (all right; Japan, detested by Greenpeace) which traditionally hunt for whales gaining an extremely bad reputation for continuing to hunt them even as the strain upon their numbers from over-hunting are placing them in the diminishing-species category. And animal activists going out of their way to rev up their propaganda networks toward boycotting of the annual seal slaughter off Canada's East Coast; Norway not so much.

A leopard seal rests on a piece of floating ice near the Chilean station Bernardo O'Higgins, Antarctica on Jan. 22, 2015. (AP / Natacha Pisarenko)

So, why the surprise over seeing a fish ... in Antarctica's South Shetland Island archipelago ... oh, that's why. The deep, dark underworld of the frozen South Pole. Really deep. Really dark. Places that haven't seen sunlight for actually aeons, as in millions of years, that long ago. Yet there they are, both microscopic creature and translucent fish of eye-ready dimensions.

On the other hand, who might anticipate that worms could be found within frozen ice? Alive, that is. In great numbers. Worms which by nature have their own natural anti-freeze, that keeps them thriving in ice. They're seen in great numbers in Alaska and parts of Washington State and British Columbia. Living in glaciers. Really.
Ice Worm on Easton Glacier (Marieve Desjardins)

"You don't have to be a rocket scientist to look around and see how extreme this environment is", commented biochemist Jenny Blamey, surrounded by ice-blanketed black volcanic rock on Deception Island, Antarctic. "This is really like a desert, where you have extreme low temperatures", Ms. Blamey, research director at the Biosciences Foundation Chile, studying the genetic material of micro-organisms, explained.

Researchers who had trekked hundreds of kilometres from established structures or from a research post to reach a National Science Foundation mobile base camp at the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf, placed a remote-controlled submarine over a half kilometre deep under the ice to search for what could be seen under one of Antarctica's melting ice sheets.

It happens to represent an area on Earth of total darkness, one thousand kilometres from the closest ocean, nine metres of water under ice where the water tests at -2Centigrade, but because of the salt permeating it, remains unfrozen. When the cameras were turned on there was a thin, almost translucent fish darting about while amphipods, orange-shelled, drifted by.

An amphipod lies on ice shortly after it was brought to the surface, in a sediment lab set up in Antarctica on Jan. 19, 2015. The animal was fished out of an area of total darkness far from the ocean, where it was living a space of 30 feet of liquid water under the ice. (Reed Scherer / National Science Foundation and Northern Illinois University)

An attempt to net a fish or two failed, although some amphipods cooperated. The researchers also travelled to remote Lake Vostok, a freshwater lake buried under 3.7 km of ice, which hasn't been exposed to open air for an estimated fifteen million years. When scientists took water samples and tested for life traces they discovered genetic sequences for 3,507 recognizable species, about ten thousand of which were unknown to science.

This image released by Bob Goldstein and Vicki Madden taken with an electron microscope, shows a tardigrade, micro-animal also known as a water bear, at the UNC in Chapel Hill, N.C. In Jan. 2015, scientists found the DNA of a tardigrade in Antarctica's Lake Vostok, located in an area considered the most remote place on Earth. (UNC Chapel Hill)

"It seems like most of [them] were alive recently", said Scott Rogers, a professor of microbiology at Kentucky's Bowling Green State University, who was part of the study team. "You start to wonder if that couldn't happen on an icy moon or exo-planet", Lisa Kaltenegger, astronomer and director of the Institute for Pale Blue Dots at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, suggested.

Exploring Nature's House

It is beyond difficult for the ordinary human mind to grasp the significance and wonder at the colossal advance in space exploration made manifest by the European Space Agency's success in landing a tiny robotic science laboratory on a speeding comet that made a ten-year journey across 6.4-billion kilometres through the solar system to succeed in what surely must have seemed a dauntingly impossible mission.

That the Space Agency could even predict with such accuracy when the first signal from Philae would reach Earth to confirm that landing after the suspenseful detachment from its mother ship Rosetta is nothing short of amazing; they predicted the first signal would come in at 11:03 a.m. and so it did on Wednesday, November 12. Capping a journey and an intent beyond mere imagination of even the most feverishly aware science fiction writer.

"We are on the comet. We are sitting on the surface and Philae is talking to us", announced the lander manager, Dr. Stephan Ulamec. "It's complicated to land on a comet. It's also complicated to understand what has happened during the landing. What we know is that we touched down and we landed on the comet We had a very clear signal and we also received data from the lander. That is the very good news.
"The not-so-good news is that the anchoring harpoons did not fire So the lander is not anchored to the surface. Did we just land in a softsand box and everything is fine? Or is there something else happening? We still do not fully understand what has happened.
"Some of the data indicated that the lander may have lifted off again. It touched down and was rebouncing. We saw data on the solar generator which could be interpreted that the lander lifted off and started to turn itself. About two hours later this information of turning stopped. So maybe today, we didn't just land, we landed twice."

Twice indeed; the initiating bounce sent Philae into a seven-hour-long lift-off from which it returned to the comet finally, to rest under the shade of a cliff in that landscape of house-sized boulders, craters and alien cosmic rockface. The little science laboratory went right to work, sending back reams of data to the excited scientific minds sifting through it all, beyond joyful at the success of the mission. With the realization that because of where the little lab had finally landed its solar-fuelled generators would soon lapse into deep sleep for lack of sunlight, under the shade of that great cliff.

Even trying to imagine the cold black indifference of outer space, and a space ship hurtling purposefully through it all to finally put a distance of a half-billion kilometres between itself and Earth, to obey instructions it received from the command centre in Darmstadt, Germany to focus on landing on the surface of a speeding comet, everything depending on precise follow-up, boggles the mind. Let alone the design of the ship and its landing cargo, and the inputting of instructions for geological-scientific retrieval data to be beamed back to Earth.

The dazzling enormity of the wonder of human inquisitiveness aligned with the magnitude of human scientific ingenuity is difficult to quite comprehend. The colossal wonder that is Nature, and the incredible functioning capabilities that she endowed Earthling human beings with to enable them to explore her magnificent house of existence reflects a reality resistant to complete mindful digestion.

 
A probe named Philae is seen after it landed safely on a comet in this CIVA handout image

Living Within Nature's Wild Precincts

"Claudia and I didn't want to play the game anymore. We wanted to do something different."
"We didn't have a clue what to do here [Yukon]. But it was our future. We just knew we had to be here."
"This is not a place for a city person. But we learned how to do everything."
"Claudia was unconscious. It took me 20 minutes to get to the medical centre. The nurse was there. We needed to do CPR. I held Claudia's feet as we brought her inside."
"I was able to see her afterwards. Her face was serene, beautiful. I took her hand in mine. I smelled her We lit a candle in the nursing station, because Claudia loved candles. We always had 20 or 30 candles burning in the house. I lit a candle. I said goodbye to my love."
Matthias Liniger, Four Mile Creek, Yukon

Claudia Huber, her Malamut companion Kona, Yukon

"Being in poor condition, and still out at this time of year, this particular bear was looking for food. It was looking for a moose, a caribou, a road-kill."
"This was a chance encounter."
Ryan Hennings, Environment Yukon conservation officer

We were ourselves concerned about the potential of chance encounters when we set out twenty years ago with our youngest son, a biologist, to do the circuit of Bowron Lakes, set in the Cariboo mountains of British Columbia. We asked the provisioner from whom we rented the canoe and paddles we used, whether it might be wise to buy pepper spray. He looked sideways at our fit and muscular son, shrugged, and said in an aside to him, that he could easily outrun his mother. Ha-ha.

When we were paddling daily from lakes to rivers on the circuit, settling down in the late afternoon to set up camp, pitch our tent and prepare dinner, we were busy, and didn't give too much thought to coming across a grizzly, though they were there, somewhere, just not where we happened to be. Idly, we would occasionally focus binoculars at mountain slopes opposite our camp. At night a tall ladder had to be lifted to nearby trees where a platform rested high in the forest canopy, and where our food backpack had to be left overnight; standard camping procedure anywhere in the wilderness.

At one juncture in our week-long circuit we happened to come across a different type of food security arrangement, one that we understood was no longer in use. This was a food safe, a large rectangular steel safe presumably used at some camp sites in the past. It had seen better times. Clearly, a grizzly or a succession of grizzlies, had attempted to open it, their keen sense of smell informing them at any given time while in use, that it held edibles. That steel strongbox was dented, askew, worn and depleted; a complete and utter wreck.

Another time we paddled toward a pebble beach where we took the opportunity to stretch our legs a bit after hours of paddling. In the rain. Always in the rain. The week we were there the rain was interminable, never-stopping but for brief intervals. And since we were at about the 3,000-ft.level, it was cold; we wore winter jackets under rainsuits. We were still able to set up our tent and prepare our campsite, somehow, and deconstruct it all the following morning before once again setting out for our day's adventure. On that beach we saw the distinct prints of caribou and wolves.

Nature in all its wonder and fury holds an irresistible attraction for many people. The geology; paddling on a liquid-blue lake, the wind blowing, surrounded by the peaks of mountains marching off into the distance, the green of conifers to the treeline, then a cone of snow. As it rained during the day, you could look up, above and see the snow spreading on the mountain summit. It is breathtaking, beyond beautiful. At night, hearing a screech owl is an experience unlike any other. During the day, seeing birds in flight, and sometimes a large salmon swimming the river you're paddling on, another experience.

Claudia Huber and Matthias Liniger meant to change their lifestyles completely, not just fly across a vast country as we had done, to experience raw nature. They dreamed of leaving Switzerland and the work they did there, for another kind of lifestyle opportunity. As a child he had dreamed of the natural world and the animals that inhabit it. He had been to the Yukon years earlier. Years later the Swiss-German couple travelled to Canada then drove about in a rented recreational vehicle.

Matthias Huber   The Yukon property of Claudia Huber and Matthias Liniger. Claudia was killed by a bear.

They looked at a property, a rural property on Four Mile Creek in 2006, outside the village of Teslin in the Yukon and having liquidated their Swiss property, they bought the one they looked at and were to name their own. They became Canadian citizens and looked for work nearby. They learned their way around. Claudia herself was able to work a trap line, shoot a rifle, use a chainsaw. They planned to turn their property into a retreat for the adventure-bound tourist who might want to stay with them in one of the two cabins they were to build for guests.

They were aware of being vulnerable to a degree, and were careful to take bear spray when they were out and about. They had a large Alaskan malamute as a companion and early-alert warning system. On October 18 of this year Kona the malamute began barking furiously at eleven in the morning. That led Matthias to venture outside to see what had upset Kona. He had left his rifle inside. In the ensuing succession of events, the grizzly entered the house smashing through a window, leading Claudia and Matthias to exit it.

By then Matthias had his rifle. But by the time he managed to shoot the grizzly it had chased down and already mortally mauled Claudia. He hurriedly drove his wife into town for medical help. She did not survive, though heroic measures were desperately taken to try to save her life. A funeral took place in Whitehorse for Claudia on Wednesday. Her husband plans to remain, with their faithful dog, at the remote cabin site on Four Mile Lake To forge on with their plans to transform the property into a tourism destination.

"Coming to the Yukon was our dream. We were so proud when we got our Canadian citizenship. I hope I can stay on at Four Mile, just to feel Claudia's spirit around me. She is everywhere, in that place. I have to find a way to hold onto that", he said, speaking with Joe O'Connor, a journalist with the National Post.

Egypt-inspired probe explores our galaxy’s secrets

The Philae lander is attached to Rosetta’s side. (Photo courtesy: esa.int)

By Staff Writer | Al Arabiya News
Monday, 27 October 2014 

 

A space craft named after the Nile’s Isle of Philae will land on a comet following a 10-year mission through space aimed to unlock some of the universe’s secrets, the Guardian reported.

As part of the Rosetta Mission, organized by the European Space Agency, Philae is due to land on the comet on Nov. 12 where it will map the body and drill into the surface to obtain material that may reveal clues about the origins of the galaxy and earth.

 

Rosetta mission selfie at comet. (Photo courtesy: esa.int)

On Wednesday, scientists behind the mission met with Egyptologists at an English country estate to mark the link between the trip and a 19th-century adventurer responsible for the Egypt-inspired names in the trip.

Kingston Lacy, where the scientists and Egyptologists met, was the home of William John Bankes, the adventurer who found the Philae Obelisk in Egypt in 1815 and brought it to his estate where it stood for almost 200 years.

Bankes deciphered the Greek inscription on the Obelisk. His work led others to “crack” the code to the hieroglyphs, which allowed archaeologists and Egyptologists to decrypt the Rosetta stone and other ancient Egyptian artifacts.

The Philae obelisk at the Kingston Lacy Estate near Wimborne, Dorset. (Photo courtesy: collectingegypt.blogspot.ae)

The architects of the mission were drawn to the significance of the Rosetta Stone, and more towards the mysterious Philae obelisk.

While scientists continue to map encryptions on the obelisk revealing more information about the time and age it came from, James Grasby, a curator for the modern custodian of Kingston Lacy, the National Trust, described the events as a “wonderful collision” between the two different fields.

“The Philae obelisk led to a greater understanding of the ancient world. The Philae probe may lead to greater understanding of the planets and life on earth,” he told the Guardian.

Last Update: Monday, 27 October 2014 KSA 09:46 - GMT 06:46

Beckoning Adventure

"These files are kept open for a reason. As the glaciers melt, the depth of the glacier changes. The glaciers are always moving, so that eventually things that are lost in crevasses and whatnot will eventually surface."
Jasper RCMP Cpl. Ryan Gardiner, Alberta

"At the head of a glacier you get more snow accumulation than melting, so things get buried. At the tow of a glacier, you get more melting than snow accumulation and that's where things like rocks and bodies and whatever else become revealed. It's kind of like a river in that sense. They're travelling in this river of ice."
Andrew Fountain, glaciology expert, professor of geography and geology, Portland State University

Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press   The Canadian flag flies over the Athabasca Glacier part of the Columbia Icefields in Jasper National Park, in May 2014.

 

There are two ways that people can find themselves caught in a glacier, posits Professor Fountain. One was described in incredible detail in the personal account, Touching the Void, written by Joe Simpson in describing the excruciating experience he had suffered when he had embarked on a climb to scale the west face of never-before-ascended Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes with partner Simon Yates, in 1985.

Joe Simpson broke his leg during the frighteningly dangerous descent, and it was left to his climbing partner to accomplish the near-impossible; to gradually lower Joe by rope, bit by bit, with spectacular courage and strength, rather than abandon him, in a powerfully masterful attempt to bring them both to safety. Until Joe happened to fall into an icy crevasse at a juncture when Simon had no choice but to save himself by severing the rope that held them in tandem.

And Simon, concluding Joe had died in the fall, and unable to climb down into the crevasse, was forced to move on without him. Joe's fall hadn't killed him, only stunned him with the perplexing reality that he shouldn't have survived this second fall, and motivated him not to submit to despair, but to slide, crawl, thrust himself however improbably, with his broken leg, out of his predicament to save himself from death.

And this he miraculously managed to do sliding and crawling off the mountain for three-and-a-half agonizing days of effort.

Ten years later, a 28-year-old New Brunswicker left Calgary on his way to Jasper for a hiking expedition. Donald Jean Belliveau was on his own. Last seen four days before his disappearance on January 31, 1995, his hike was never completed with his return to Calgary and then home. An Alberta Missing Persons report was compiled, and nineteen years of searching for his whereabouts was finally brought to a rest last week.

RCMP    Donald Jean Belliveau

Hikers discovered his body in Jasper National Park, and his human remains and his possessions; clothing, glasses, were recovered by the RCMP, via helicopter. His grieving family finally has the slight comfort of closure. The discovery of his body was characterized by Professor Fountain as "relatively common these days". Of the two ways he contends people can find themselves in such hopeless situations, he feels Mr. Belliveau was likely to have fallen into a crevasse.

He may have been killed when he fell, by the impact, he may still have been alive when, as Professor Fountain says, he was buried by snow and then his body gradually forced to the bottom of the glacier through cycles of freezing and melting. A relatively short process, Professor Fountain explains, bodies usually being revealed in a period between twenty to forty years.

Other circumstances, he added, could conceivably trap luckless adventurers for thousands of years, such as occurred to Otzi, the famous Iceman discovered in 1991 on the border between Austria and Italy, a man who had lived around 3,300 BCE.

First Pakistan team of climbers scale K2 summit

The first team of Pakistani climbers to scale the world's second tallest mountain, K2, has arrived at the summit.

K2 lies in Pakistan, near the northern border with China. The climbers made it to the summit at 02:30 (22:30 GMT on Friday).

Mountaineers regard K2 as more challenging to conquer than Mount Everest, the world's highest peak.

Correspondents, however, say descending from the top is more dangerous.
The Pakistani climbers were undertaking their expedition on the 60th anniversary of the first successful ascent of K2.

Two Italians - Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli - reached the top of K2 on 31 July 1954.

Individual Pakistanis have reached the top before

 

The current expedition - called K2 60 Years Later - includes six Pakistanis: Hassan Jan, Ali Durani, Rahmat Ullah Baig, Ghulam Mehdi, Ali and Muhammad Sadiq. Three Italians are also part of the group.

Individual Pakistan climbers have reached the top before - but this is Pakistan's first successful team attempt.

The BBC's Shahzeb Jillani in Islamabad says many have died returning to the base camp in the past as the descent is trickier.

In June, the Italian organisation supporting the Pakistani effort announced it had installed a weather station feeding data to the climbers and researchers monitoring activity in high mountain regions.

Trapped in the Bowels of the Earth

"For years our solidarity has grown. We have worked together and gotten to know each other. Today we have the proof that this is the right way to work. We overcame language and technical barriers and succeeded in completing a difficult operation."
Roberto Corti, Italian National Society of Alpine Speleology

"They really worked hard; they brought their best. A difficult rescue effort like this can always fail. It is essential that we work together."
Klemens Reindl, rescue leader

There are those people who are so curious about the world that they will go to any extraordinary measures to explore and discover the mysteries of nature and our existence within it. From the depths of the oceans deep to the closely cloistered bowels of the Earth -- from deep space exploration to ascending the most remote, forbidding peaks on various Continents, and exploring the most frigid, inhospitable areas of Earth where ice and snow and impossibly thick glaciers and icebergs are king -- those intrepid souls set out to satisfy their avid curiosity.

There is an alpine cavern near Berchtesgaden in southern Germany, known as the Riesending (Big Thing). That cavern can be reached below the surface of Untersberg Mountain by expert spelunkers. The Riesending cave north of Berchtaesgaden stretches over 20 kilometres vertically and horizontally into the mountain which hosts it. A team of experts discovered its presence in the mid 1990s, and mapped it in 2002.

Source: Arge Bad Cannstatt

One of those experienced spelunkers was Johann Westhauser, now 52, who works in the physics Department of the Karlsruhe Institute for Technology, and he is acknowledged as one of the country's most experienced cave researchers. Since its discovery Mr. Westhauser has explored the Riesending cave several times. The most recent occasion when Mr. Westhauser explored the cavern was this very month. Unfortunately, on June 8 while underground with a companion a rock struck him on the head about 1,000 metres underground.

His colleague made his way back to the surface in twelve hours, to alert authorities, who then undertook a complex international rescue. And after 22 days, ten hours and 40 minutes trapped underground in parlous conditions, Mr. Westhauser emerged from his dark prison. He was strapped to a stretcher, handled by dozens of volunteer rescuers representing the international community of scientists, explorers and spelunkers. The surface of the 2,000 metre mountain where the narrow mouth of the cavern opens in a vertical drop is shrub-covered, impossible to land a helicopter. So equipment was lowered by cable and then a landing pad cleared.



Hundreds of rescue workers arrived from Austria, Switzerland, Italy and Croatia, representing professionally expert climbers accustomed to descending into the inner depths of mountains. Two hundred and two descended into the cave to eventually manage to carry the wounded man strapped into a padded fibreglass stretcher, winching him with a pulley through the darkness deep in the mountain. Before they had reached him, five bivouacs equipped with food and sleeping bags had been set up at intervals. They painstakingly handled their burden with great care, going from bivouac to bivouac. At the final bivouac, they rested.



Finally they lifted the rescued man to safety through the narrow shaft leading to the surface where he was treated by teams of doctors at an emergency medical station set up near the mouth of the cave. From there he was flown by helicopter to hospital. "We have achieved our goal. We have also made rescue history, which was only possible through international co-operation", said Norbert Heiland, head of Bavaria's Mountain Rescue Service.  The entire effort, from start to successful completion, involved no fewer than 728 people.

Brazilian fisherman finds satellite launch debris in Amazon

BBC News online -- 30 April 2014

The metal panel was floating on the Uriandeua river, in Brazil's northern Para state

A fisherman in Brazil's Amazon region has found a large piece of debris from a European space launch.

The man said he found the metal object floating on a remote river in the municipality of Salinopolis.
The debris has been confirmed as coming from a satellite launched from the Kourou base, in neighbouring French Guiana, last July.

The piece bears the logo of the UK Space Agency and Arianespace - the European satellite company.
A spokeswoman for the UK Space Agency, Julia Short, confirmed that the debris was from the launch of Europe's largest telecommunications satellite last year.

"It is the launch vehicle payload shroud from the Alphasat launch last year. It probably landed in the Atlantic and then floated inland,"

Alphasat, described as Europe's most sophisticated telecommunications satellite, was launched from the Kourou base on 25 July.

Brazilian authorities in northern Para state said they would contact the UK Space Agency and ask them to collect the object.

According to local reports, it took more than 10 people to retrieve the panel from the riverbank.

The UK Space Agency logo was clearly visible on the panel

Residents, policemen and rescue workers took selfies next to the unusual find

The fisherman who found the debris said the authorities initially did not believe him

 

"It is big, the size of a car," local resident Gilson dos Santos told O Globo.
Residents have been told to report immediately any symptoms of illness, but rescue teams do not believe the wreckage is radioactive.

The local fisherman who came across the unusual catch - 73-year-old Manuel Alves dos Santos - said the authorities initially did not believe him.

"It hit my fishing line and I pushed to the bank of the river to see what it was. It is the first time I see something like that," he told O Liberal newspaper.

The object was found on Saturday night, but according to residents the authorities failed to respond to their initial calls.

Recovery teams only arrived in the area after the finding was reported in the media.

Mount Everest avalanche: 'We saw bodies brought down'

BBC News online -- 28 April 2014

Climbers at base camp at Mount Everest hoped to press on but they eventually had to leave

Many foreign climbers have left Everest base camp after sherpa guides cancelled ascents following an avalanche that killed 16 colleagues. Paul Valin was getting ready to climb the world's highest mountain when the avalanche struck on 18 April. The 32-year-old Frenchman, who has since descended, describes what happened.

I was preparing for many months to climb Mount Everest, and that dream was coming true for me when I reached the base camp on 17 April. I met with my team mates on the expedition. There were 12 of us in total.

The avalanche happened the very next day. It happened very early in the morning and as soon as we woke up around 7am, base camp was buzzing with news of the accident.

Paul Valin is determined to climb Everest one day
 

We finally understood how big it was when we heard at least 20 people were caught up in it.
We heard that sherpas were going up the Khumbu Icefall and a ladder that was bridging a crevasse fell, so the way forward was blocked and they couldn't go further.

They ended up staying at a place that is considered quite dangerous, which you would never camp at normally.
It was horrible. We saw the bodies being brought down.

There was a mourning period for about four days, agreed between the Western expeditions and the sherpas, for about four days.

We were terribly sad, especially for our sherpas. Some of them had lost brothers in the avalanche.
They went back to their villages to be with their families while we stayed at base camp.

During that period we rested so that our bodies would get acclimatised. We also checked our equipment, made preparations for the summit, and did some short treks on the other side of the base camp.

About three to four expeditions gave up as they had lost sherpas or had sherpas who were injured. But there were still lots of other expeditions waiting to continue.

Avalanche survivor Kaji Sherpa is recovering after being buried for three hours under snow

Relatives of sherpas killed in the Mount Everest avalanche wait for a funeral procession to begin in Kathmandu, Nepal on April 21

A Buddhist monk lights the funeral pyre of a Nepalese sherpa killed in the avalanche

Relatives of sherpas killed in the avalanche weep at a funeral ceremony in Kathmandu, Nepal

Our sherpas who had left came back on the 22nd.
Most of the other expeditions' sherpas also came back because they need to make money during the climbing season, which can last two to three months, to pay for their children's school fees and other necessities.

The next day, there was a religious ceremony called a 'puja' to bless the expeditions.
Around the time of the ceremony, some of our sherpas as well as the sherpas of another bigger expedition received threats of physical harm and harm to their families.

These people making the threats wanted to shut down the mountain. They were a small group of individuals who we heard were linked to political actors.

The day after, it was confirmed our expedition would not continue. Our sherpas didn't want to go on and we respected that.

Climbers at base camp hoped to press on
Expeditions' tents pitched at base camp. Climbers at base camp hoped that despite the avalanche, they could continue with the summit, but they eventually had to leave

As of Friday, we understood that all the expeditions are shut down. Most of the climbers have left. This was despite the government saying that the mountain is open for business.

There are media reports saying expeditions are leaving because it's not safe, but that's not true. Overall, the ice is not worse than the year before.

There are icefall 'doctors' as well who are people who make sure the roads are taken care of and safe to travel. But we heard they could not do their job because of pressure and threats.

The expedition team made a lot of effort to prepare and now we are not summiting. We are really quite sorry this has happened.

It's like getting into a boxing ring, ready for the match after a year of preparation, and the match is suddenly cancelled.

I don't plan on trying to get a refund on the money I've spent so far, as most of the costs have already been incurred. But I hope to come back next year.

I still love adventuring and the mountains, and I still want to achieve this dream.
I will climb Mount Everest one day.

Paul Valin was speaking to the BBC's Tessa Wong.

Ego-Driven Entitlement

"If you can envision a swimming relay where one woman goes in and one woman goes out, it will be a snorkel relay."
"Because it's a team of all women, we're going to be reaching out to Inuit women and girls, discussing things ranging from societal change in their communities to climate change."
"Our group of eco-tourists kept its spirits high by delivering presentations on ocean conservation and Antarctic exploration."
"Quite fittingly -- perhaps, even, as an unplanned symbol -- I delivered a lecture on Sir Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914-16."

Stephen Henshall -- Susan Eaton emerges from an RCAF helicopter after last year's rescue

"It was just a perfect storm of events that broke the ice away from the land where it was holding fast."
"I don't think the two expeditions are comparable, but what is comparable is that everything is dynamic, ice is dynamic ... whether you're on a boat or close to shore, things can happen."
Susan Eaton, "extreme snorkeller", oilpatch geologist, consultant, Alberta

Sir Ernest Shackleton and his men experienced quite a number of 'perfect storms', enough to last their lifetime. They, unfortunately, could not resort to the use of a satellite phone to hail rescue operations to deliver the doughty explorers from immediate and excruciating harm resulting in their deaths, one after the other. Susan Eaton, on the other hand, a self-described "extreme snorkeller", was able to do just that.

Snorkelers' paradise in the Western Antarctic Peninsula
Photo courtesy of Roger Munns and Waterproof Expeditions

On an expedition to the Arctic last summer she with another ten international tourists set out for the Arctic to snorkel among bowhead whales off the Baffin Island coast, before becoming stranded on a drifting ice floe. The rescue mission mounted by Canadian Forces ended up dinging the Canadian taxpayer $2,748,046, the cost of deploying five rescue aircraft and airdrops of three $23,000 survival kits, unused, wasted.

That expedition waited for their rescuers to arrive, and while waiting took advantage in situ of hot showers, two executive chefs' offerings at their delectating disposal, and the comfort of heated tents. Ms. Eaton published an account of that exciting expedition in Swerve magazine out of Calgary, and in it mentioned the criticism that resulted when taxpayers learned they footed a bill "for what might be viewed as a frivolous activity by a wealthy few", and one can only concur with that description.

So is this woman the least bit remorseful over the fun and games she and her cohorts indulged in by ponying up the extravagance of the fee it took to be ushered into that pristine environment, and their distress after learning that were afloat on a detached ice floe, alerting the military to fly in to their rescue and dinging the less adventurous and decidedly less well-heeled for that timely rescue?

Not a bit of it. Another similar adventure is underway for 2016, which Ms. Eaton anticipates with a preliminary trip to the North to conduct "proof of concept" equipment tests. This will be an all-woman snorkel relay through the Northwest Passage. Planned to initiate in Pond Inlet, Nunavut, the expedition is to spend one hundred days snorkelling through the Arctic archipelago, with the use of diver-propulsion vehicles, to end their trip in Inuvik, North West Territories.

A mother ship will accompany them, along with artists, scientists and Inuit representatives, with the entire voyage anticipated to come in at $1.5-million; costly, but far less so than their earlier rescue in 2013. The ten women, aged 26 to 56 have reserved their place on the hugely anticipated 2016 voyage; six Canadians, two Americans, one New Zealander, one Mexican. Meant, as well to serve as a "cross-cultural contact with local Inuit.

On the previous trip the group had taken advantage of the opportunity to protect themselves from inconvenient additional expenses by taking out rescue insurance. But since it was adjudged that "no negligence or fraud" was involved in their unexpected severance from the ice-sheet-covered land mass they thought themselves secure upon, they weren't charged for their rescue.

Ms. Eaton has hit all the right notes as an intrepid adventurer, using those hot button issues that garner awe and respect, such as feminism, Aboriginal cultural contact, and environmentalism. With those motherhood issues, how could critics damn their enthusiasm and enterprise? They are ever so socially responsible, so what's a few million of our tax dollars expended on a "good cause", complaint?

It makes those of us who don't have any ambitions to set out on such grand adventures that may end up costing other hard-working people who will never have those opportunities, much less dream about them, look pretty hard-crusted and mean-spirited, doesn't it?