Climber-Author Bo Parfet: “The higher we soar, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly”

Text by Tesuhiko Endo

When adventurer, entrepreneur, and author Bo Parfet began his quest to climb the Seven Summits, he was a 230-pound corporate financier working 100-hour weeks in New York City and subsisting off a steady diet of cheeseburgers and coca-cola. 

“I literally stopped at a sporting goods store on my way to the airport (en route to Kilimanjaro) and bought whatever gear I thought I needed,” he told ADVENTURE while in Manhattan for a presentation at the Explorer’s Club.

This doesn’t seem like the best approach for climbing any mountain, much less the highest in Africa. And of course, it wasn’t. But Parfet survived the experience (barely) and, in doing so, caught a climbing bug that would take him around the world in search of the highest peeks he could get his crampons on. Check out all his high altitude hi-jinks in his book Die Trying.  

“People thought I was nuts,” he admits. But Parfet said that such reactions to his habit of tempting fate on high mountains only encouraged him. “The higher we soar, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly,” he offered while flipping through a brief slide show he was preparing to show to the people who were eagerly awaiting his presentation. 

Despite a penchant from dropping somewhat grandiose quotes into conversation, Parfet is not your typical self-aggrandizing mountain climber. “I’m not Lance Armstrong, I’m not Ed Viesturs, I’m just a normal guy who was really unhappy with his life.” He explained. “Anybody can make a change in their lives, but it’s a bit like jumping off a cliff–the cliff of change, I call it–you come up to the edge and look down, then you get scared and back off. What most people don’t realize is that going back and forth is usually more painful than actually making the jump.” 

Luckily for Parfet, he took the plunge and although it has meant its fair share of pain (food poisoning on Kilimanjaro, the flu on Everest, and enough altitude-related aches and pains to hobble a mountain goat) he has loved every step of it. A good illustration of this is that one of his favorite climbs was Puncak Jaya (Carstensz Pyramid), in Papua, New Guinea. This expedition involved dodging civil war, eating roasted rats, being smuggled through a heavily guarded gold mine, and handing out a small trust fund’s worth of bribe money.  

Despite the difficulties, or indeed, because of them, he has also always made a point of giving back. 

“I literally went around my office with a baseball hat taking donations and was able to scrape together enough money to send two African kids to medical school.” Although his projects became a bit more ambitious in the years to come, they were always done with the same goal. “I would like to be part of every country that I visit, and for me, philanthropy is a way of achieving that interest.”

He may have come a long way, but Parfet isn’t slowing down just yet. When he’s not at his day job running his own real-estate company, he is planning the first ascent (and subsequent first descent on skis) of an unnamed mountain in the Himalaya in 2010. It’s pretty busy schedule, but he seems to prefer it that way. “One of my favorite quotes,” he said just as our time was running out, “is from Mahatma Ghandi.  It goes: 'Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.' ” 

Adventure in 60 Seconds: Last Week in Exploration

Text by Tetsuhiko Endo

The annals of modern history are filled with the names of English people who were willing to put themselves through a lot of hardship and danger in the name of adventure. But what about their northern cousins, the Scots? Any Jacobite worth his tartan will tell you that a Scot is twice as strong and three times as brave as anyone born south of Hadrian’s Wall. A concerned Scottish reader noticed this and passed us a link to Mark Beaumont, one Scot who’s not about to be upstaged by the English, or anyone else. Last year he broke the record for cycling around the world by doing it in a leg cramp-inducing 276 days and now he is back to his old tricks with a solo ride down the entire length of the American Cordillera which stretches from Alaska to Argentina. Also, just to make sure he gets enough exercise, he has already climbed Mt. McKinley and will take a stab at Aconcagua to finish things off with style if/when he reaches Argentina in February, 2010. Follow his blogs and his tweets on his BBC page. 

OCEANS

Whereas rivalry is often a driving factor behind adventure sports, it was the spirit of international camaraderie that buoyed the Woodvale Works Team to victory in the Indian Ocean Rowing Race last Thursday. By rowing between western Australia and Mauritius in 58 days 15 hours and 8 minutes, the team composed of eight Brits, three Americans, and one Belgian, managed to knock six days off the previous route record, as well as establish a slew of “firsts”. Among them, the first parapalegic (Angela Madsen) to row across the Indian Ocean (indianoceanrowingrace09.com)

While the Woodvale Works Team popped open bottles, one of the other rowers in the in Indian Ocean, Sarah Outen, was getting popped out of her boat. According to her blog, she was bilging out her boat in heavy seas when the entire vessel was rolled by a large swell. Luckily, she was wearing a life line that kept her from being swept away and was able to climb back aboard, shaken, but unhurt save for a mildly sprained wrist. As she nears the final third of her trip, she remains strong and in good spirits. Still, click  over to her blog and send a her a message when you get the chance–capsizing in the Indian Ocean is deserves a kind thought or two.

Not everyone was dodging large swells last week. A group of Australian surfers took an hour ride to an open ocean big wave spot off the coast of southern Australia and lucked into some beastly breakers. Take a deep breath and check out the photos on Surfline.

JUNGLES

Speaking of large waves, the Amazon River is home to what is arguably considered the largest tidal bore in the world–the Pororoca. That, however, is the last thing Ed Stafford and his guide, Cho Sanchez River are worried about as they continue their quest to walk the length of the river. In order to get around an un-crossable section near the Brazil/Colombia border, they are going to have to leave the river and hike inland – a move that will cut off their aquatic lifeline and expose them to food shortages and natives who have not had as much contact with the outside world. Let’s hope, for Ed’s sake, that Cho knows what he’s doing.

MOUNTAINS

In Pakistan, currently home to some of the un-friendliest natives in the world, the Taliban, climbers now are less worried about people, and more about the mountains they are beginning to climb. Firstly, ADVENTURE is sad to report that Italian skier Michelle Fait perished in a fall while skiing down the southeast Spur of K2. He and Swedish partner Fredrik Ericsson were to attempt K2 without supplementary oxygen and then perform a ski descent, reports explorersweb.com.

One man who is no stranger to loss on that mountain is Russian, Serguey Bogolomov who was part of a failed attempt on the mountain that cost the lives of four of his fellow climbers in 2006. He’s back in Islamabad, according to explorersweb, to attempt the mountain for the fourth time. (k2climb.net).

Finally, one woman who has not gotten much press regarding her attempt to become the first woman to climb all fourteen 8000’ers is Korean Oh Eun-Sun. However, with a strong showing in the Himalaya, she is now in the Karakoram attempting Nanga Parbat. If she summits, a chopper will be waiting for her at base camp to whisk her directly to the Gasherburns. Success on these two peeks could catapult her past Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner and Edurne Pasában in the race, not that anyone is keeping track. (k2climb.net).

The Most Dangerous Dive: Last Call For Diving’s Greatest Prize?

The Andrea Doria shipwreck will never have its own Travel Channel special. A visitor finds no reefs thronged with colorful sea creatures, no bikini-clad sirens frolicking in warm aquamarine water. But what the Doria does have is mystique. Its reputation as the Mount Everest of scuba diving dates back to a foggy evening in 1956, when the 700-foot Italian luxury liner collided with another ship, killing 51 people and sending the Doria to the ocean floor, 250 feet beneath the notoriously turbulent waters that swirl a hundred miles off the eastern tip of Long Island. Worldwide media coverage quickly drew undersea adventurers. Those who reached the Doria in its early days surfaced with tales of a site that looked every bit the part of a romantic Hollywood shipwreck. The liner became a must-do for serious technical divers, even as new technology made deeper wrecks accessible—and as the Doria claimed the lives of 15 victims over the years. Now, with the boat breaking down and new points of entry opening up, divers are drawn by the chance to enter previously blocked compartments, and by the knowledge that each season may be the Doria’s last. “It’s just a matter of time before she implodes,” says Richie Kohler, who has dived the Doria 126 times and leads expeditions there. “For divers who have been waiting until they get more vacation dollars saved up, well, I’d say it’s now or maybe never. --Brendan Spiegel

1. If natural deterioration progressed this winter as expected, the cargo holds—said to be laden with the stuff of scuba lore, like jewels and 50-year-old bottles of whiskey—may be open for the first time. 

2. The Doria’s engine room is another never-before-seen feature that divers hope to glimpse this summer. Until now, access has been blocked by the ship’s steel hull, which is splitting.

3. When divers emerge from the Doria–usually out of Gimbel’s Hole–they face strong, unpredictable currents capable of sweeping them miles from their boats.

4. Scoring china from the vestiges of the first-class dining room is a major coup. But souvenir hunting can be deadly. “We’d risk our lives to find the saucer that matched a teacup,” Kohler says.

Illustration by Emily Cooper

Adventure Photo Challenge: Sport Climbing Tonsai Beach, Thailand

This photo was taken by Denver ADVENTURE fan Lori Debardelaben using a Canon Power Shot SX200IS. We in the edit office were pretty envious of the fun these folks were having as they climbed the limestone cliffs, plunging into the ocean below, as needed. 

Check in daily to see other featured reader photos in our photo gallery or join us as fan on Facebook to submit your own adventure images.

Deal of the Week: Calling All Wrangler Wannabes - 50 Percent Off Montana's Lazy E-L Ranch

Normally we’d steer clear of a deal called “Red Neck Bailout,” but this one is too good to pass up: This summer, Lazy E-L Ranch, in Roscoe, Montana, is offering wrangler-wannabes a 50-percent discount on weeklong stays, knocking the starting price per person from $1,895 to about $950 (covers six nights and all meals). The 108-year-old cattle ranch sits on 12,000 acres of rolling terrain beneath the Beartooth Mountains and sleeps guests in three old-but-plush cabins (past visitors include Roy Rogers and Robert Redford). Spend your mornings herding cattle on horseback—Lazy E-L has some 2,300 yearlings to tend—and afternoons however you please. You can hike the Beartooths, raft the nearby Stillwater, or cast to trout on the ranch’s West Rosebud River. Yellowstone’s East Gate Entrance is also less than two hours away....

THE CATCH: Cabins are booking up fast and only certain weeks remain from now through the end of September—your best bet is to call the ranch directly and ask about what’s left. Also, the discount applies to the maximum price for each cabin. So if, for example, you book the three-person cabin, which typically costs $5,685 ($1,895 x 3), expect to pay half of that ($2,842.50), even if you only have two people in your party.

I’M IN: Visit lazyel.com or contact 406-328-6858

South Carolina Governor Disappears to Hike the AT, Detours to Argentina

Text by Christian Camerota

South Carolina governor and part-time adventurer Mark Sanford is embroiled in controversy as a result of his disappearance last Thursday.

The jet-setting public official, and possible 2012 presidential candidate, apparently needed a break after an intense legislative session last week. It turns out the destination of his miny vacay was an even tougher decision for Sanford, as he initially informed his staff he'd be hiking the Appalachian Trail and then subsequently took a short, 5000-mile detour to Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Sanford's had little to say about his jaunt south, other than that he took some time to drive along the coastline while he was there. As a few other papers have said, like South Carolina's The State, who initially reported the story, it would be tough to imagine Sanford spending his whole trip enjoying the waterfront since there's only about two miles of it close to the city and it's usually jam-packed with traffic.

But, who knows? Sanford's an unconventional guy. For proof, look no farther than the fact that he chose Father's Day weekend to go all Bobby-Fisher on his staff and family.

Further adding to the mystery of this tale of guile and deception is the fact that Sanford allegedly parked a car with a bunch of hiking equipment at the South Carolina airport, but then had another car in Atlanta upon his return. That's just speculation, though. Maybe the man has cars with hiking equipment strategically placed at all the nation's airports?

Hopefully, Sanford's 2:00 p.m. press conference today will clear things up (or add to the intrigue with vague legalese and avoidance tactics). Check back for updates throughout the day.

UPDATES

Here's a great timeline for the Sanford events:

tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com

Great live blogging of it going on here:

blogs.wsj.com

Follow National Geographic ADVENTURE on Facebook and Twitter!

Adventure Philanthropy: Climbing Kilimanjaro with Roadmonkey

Text by New York Times reporter and Iraq war correspondent Paul von Zielbauer, who started Roadmonkey as a way to combine adventure travel and giving back and engaging with local communities. He is currently taking guests up Kilimanjaro, followed by volunteering at a school in Dar es Salaam, Tanzanina. Paul will be checking with us along the way.

Day 1: We’ve arrived in Tanzania and are ready to go...unlike the weather.

As I write this note, from the desk of my not-so-well-lighted hotel room in Moshi, Tanzania, our very eager ten-member Roadmonkey expedition team is just 90 minutes from launching its six-day trek up 19,345-foot Mt. Kilimanjaro, the tallest peak in Africa.

It’s 6:30 in the morning; it’s dark out, and Moshi is thrumming rain.

The kind of African rain that would be great to wake up, listen, and drink coffee to. But not the kind of rain in which one wants to begin a multi-hour uphill hike. I just moved all my clothes into a giant Zip-Loc dry bag (who knew they made 10-gallon Zip-Locs?) and have flipped the mental switch from expecting a pleasant day hike to enduring a bone-soaking slog.

It’s okay. This is Africa. We’re Roadmonkeys. What doesn’t kill us make us…walk faster.

Continue reading this post >>


Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

Travel Tech: Twitter Apps For the Adventure Set (For 3GS iPhone)

Text by Laura Buckley. Also see Steve Casimiro top 20 travel apps.

Two very interesting things happened last week: Twitter made front-page headlines, showing skeptics just how useful the micro-blogging tool can be to connect people on the move in distant places; and Apple released the speedy new iPhone 3GS. If Twitter can effectively organize demonstrations in Iran, it certainly can help keep tabs on the most itinerant of travelers--now with video and better photos. This inspired us to put together a list of some of our favorite iPhone Twitter apps for the adventure set. With these apps, it's easier than ever to keep your friends, family, and fans in the loop about your excursions. It's twit-tastic, really.

Twitterfon, free
Also availale in a pro version ($4.99) for the advanced Twitterer, but we like the free version. No bells and whistles here--it's just simple and super easy to use. Did we mention it was free?

Tweetmic, $0.99
Although it's currently experiencing some problems due to the Twitpocalypse bug, this twitter add-on app only does one thing, but does it well: tweetcasts. It's perfect for recording audio of your screaming excitement from your latest sky-diving expedition and upload to twitter.

Tweetie, $2.99
Tweetie is super fast and easily allows you to upload photos, follow your friends and manage multiple accounts. Its interface is clean and very user friendly.

Twitterific Premium, $3.99
This winner of the 2008 Apple Design Award for best social networking app can manage multiple accounts and be customized for your personal tweeting needs. Not recommended for those new to the Twitter scene, but could be for you if you're a twitmaniac.

Twittelator Pro, $4.99
The future of tweeting? You can now shoot, edit, and upload video tweets with the updated version of Twittleator Pro to accompany the new iPhone 3GS. You're friends can't doubt you landed the jump when you've captured the video.


Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

Adventure in 60 Seconds: Last Week in Exploration

Text by Tetsuhiko Endo

In times past, “adventure” was the unexpected and rarely welcomed side effect of exploration. With much of the world’s nooks and crannies now thoroughly treaded, mapped, and photographed, the more intrepid souls of the 21st century have to create their own adventure. That might explain why Brit Ed Stafford has decided to cross South American on foot from Camana on the Peruvian coast via the Amazon River to it’s mouth on the Atlantic coast of Brazil. This all sounds fine until you consider that one nickname for the Amazon is the “Green Hell." He has already lost one teammate due to “significant differences” and another, one Sam Dyson, just returned to the expedition after having such bad foot rot he had to take a breather. Luckily, Ed is also accompanied by the knowledgeable and apparently unflappable Gadiel “Cho” Sanchez Rivera, a Peruvian who is acting as his guide. The expedition began on April 2, and if all goes according to plan they will be done next May. You can check out their blog every Thursday on their website.

Speaking of trying to keep your head above water, Sarah Outen has had a mostly splendid week in the Indian Ocean with fair winds, calm seas, and only a bit of loneliness tugging at her. Pop over to her website and send her a quick message while she rows.

A whole different type of race started this past week on a whole different ocean. Big wave surfer/fitness guru extraordinaire Laird Hamilton, up to his old tricks, embarked with an all-star team on the infamously grueling cycling competition Race Across America. The route will take them from Malibu, California, to the Statue of Liberty in New York City. His teammates include Don Wildman, the founder of Bally Total Fitness, Jason Winn, a former Texas Tech quarterback and, of course, Tim Commerford, the bassist for popular rock band Rage Against the Machine. Follow their progress here.

Of course, it wasn’t all adventure for adventure’s sake last week. The BBC reports that NASA reminded us there is still much unknown when it launched two Lunar probes this week. They will gather data to eventually facilitate the return of U.S. astronauts to the moon (news.bbc.co.uk). One of the probes will orbit the big hunk of cheese and help map the terrain while another will crash land and analyze the resulting dust cloud for ice traces. Thankless work, but that’s the beauty of robots isn’t it?

In other thankless jobs, the expedition organizers for the Pakistani climbing season were pulling their hair out this past week with neither the weather nor the Taliban cooperating with plans. The same bad weather that has been aborting summit attempts for the last couple of weeks also cancelled those daily Skardu flights that were allowing climbers to avoid the somewhat risky Karakorum Highway (KKH). Explorersweb.com reports that many have chosen to take their chances with the cannonball run and all have gotten through okay with the help of the occasional police escort. Now all they have to worry about is the snow.

It wasn’t all bad news for climbers this week. In slightly belated fashion, climbing magazine reported that paraplegic Phil Packer--a Major in the British army who lost the use of his legs in a rocket attack-- jumarred his way up El Capitan on June 10th. The feat is equivalent to doing 4, 254 pullups. (climbing.com)

National Parks Are Free This Weekend!

. This weekend all national parks in the country are free! Exciting news (although, an awful lot are free all the time). It's the first of three weekends this summer that parks nationwide will waive entry fees, at a hit of an estimated $500,000 a day. If you end up taking advantage, buy a lot of pie and postcards—the NP's are feeling the recession, too. 

 

Fee Free National Park Weekends:
June 20-21, 2009 (Father’s Day weekend)
July 18-19, 2009
August 15-16, 2009

Get more info here >>

And for some inspiration, read our June/July 2009 cover story about nine ultimate parks with an essay by Ken Burns about making his new national parks documentary series. The photo gallery is also quite impressive.