Table of contents for Winter 2025-2026 in The Explorers Journal

At a time when many institutions are struggling to define their relevance, The Explorers Club is experiencing something both rare and encouraging—forward momentum rooted in purpose. The Explorers Club 50, now in its sixth year, has grown into a powerful community of impact. With 50 honorees selected annually, nearly 300 individuals who are actively changing the world now stand within our EC50 ranks. These scientists, conservationists, educators, innovators, and storytellers share a defining trait: they understand that discovery matters most when it improves lives. Their work does not stop at new knowledge—it extends to communication, connection, and action. That same spirit is reflected in the Club’s grants program, which, like the EC50, supports explorers working on the front lines of science, conservation, and education. Whether advancing research, protecting ecosystems, or…

Norbu Tenzing Norgay NORBU TENZING NORGAY IS THE ELDEST SON AND ONE OF FIVE CHILDREN OF THE GREAT SHERPA TENZING NORGAY, THE FIRST TO SUMMIT MT. EVEREST IN 1953 WITH SIR EDMUND HILLARY. NORBU, 63, HAS FOLLOWED IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF HIS LATE FATHER, WHO DIED IN 1986, NOT ON THE MOUNTAINS, BUT IN PHILANTHROPIC EFFORTS TO HELP HIS NATIVE SHERPA PEOPLE THROUGH THE AMERICAN HIMALAYAN FOUNDATION, WHERE HE SERVES AS VICE PRESIDENT. WE RECENTLY CAUGHT UP WITH HIM TO CHAT ABOUT HIS LATE FATHER; HIS BROTHER, CLIMBER JAMLING; THE STATE OF EVEREST TODAY; AND AN UPCOMING EVEREST MOVIE FEATURING HIS FAMILY. JC: Any fond memories of your late father? NTN: After he climbed Everest, crowds of people would stop by our house, hoping to meet him. He loved gardening,…

For this edition of The Explorers Journal, we join a suite of expeditions traveling not only across the globe but through space and time. For our cover story, Robert Atwater and members of the 52-person-strong Roy Chapman Andrews Legacy Expedition journey into the Great Gobi to take care of unfinished business left by the famed paleontologist when civil unrest in Mongolia forced his American Museum of Natural History team to cut short their 1925 field campaign. Following on the success of the largest multidisciplinary expedition to venture into Mongolia in a century, Atwater plans to return to the Gobi for another three expeditions—two planned for later this year, and one for 2027. Complementing our deep-time paleontological coverage, speleologist Michael Girard invites us into Sistema Calera in Mexico’s Sierra Madres where…

Clémentine Moulin does not start with ice. Calling from Lorient, France, the Tara Ocean Foundation’s head of expeditions begins with consequence, and with the “invisible life” of the ocean, which links the lives of inland polar peoples. From that premise, the Tara Polar Station is a drifting observatory designed to learn from the Central Arctic without letting the platform overwhelm the science, or the science outrun its duty to give back. Interestingly, the inspiration behind her work came from a book about the USS Jeannette expedition to the Arctic (1879–81), a story that ended when the ship was crushed by ice after drifting for two years, and what that loss has taught the next generation. She describes how fragments from the Jeannette were later found on Greenland’s coast, and how…

Often called the “Holy Grail of shipwrecks,” the galleon San José has long captured the imagination of treasure hunters, historians, and archaeologists. In Neptune’s Fortune: The Billion-Dollar Shipwreck and the Ghosts of the Spanish Empire, Julian Sancton dives deep into the story of this legendary vessel; from the South American mines that produced its treasure—a haul of gold, silver, and emeralds worth an estimated $20 billion—to the battle that sank the 64-gun ship in 1708, and the decades-long quest to recover the vessel in the wake of its November 2015 discovery in 600 meters of water off the coast of Cartagena by a team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). At the heart of the story is Roger Dooley, an idiosyncratic and perhaps unlikely hero whom Sancton described at…

“EXPLORATION BECOMES REAL THE MOMENT A STUDENT SEES THEIR OWN EXPERIMENT CARRIED OUT MORE THAN 34 KILOMETERS ABOVE EARTH.”—BOBBY M. RUSSELL, EXPLORERS CLUB MEMBER SINCE 2025 At dawn, the hydrogen-filled balloon tethered to our research platform rose through the stillness. As the craft approached the upper stratosphere, the balloon continued to stretch toward its limits in the thinning air. Upon reaching its maximum expansion at an altitude of 34.45 kilometers, the balloon failed as designed. Its burst created a plume—dramatic for a brief moment, routine in physics. For this flight, the Friendship-2 research platform carried student-designed environmental experiments—including projects from two Ukrainian schools participating remotely—to record temperature gradients, UV intensity, ozone concentration, and pressure profiles. While the students own the science, I make sure it gets there via a stable…

sap-brined wild boar with maple turnip mash, charred carrots, young milkweed pods, & maple-mustard sauceSERVES 4 WE RECENTLY ARRIVED AT LES STROUD’S COTTAGE IN MUSKOKA, ONTARIO, WHICH IS SURROUNDED BY MAPLE TREES, AT PRECISELY THE RIGHT MOMENT TO TAP THEM AND MAKE SYRUP. THERE IS SOMETHING QUIETLY PROFOUND ABOUT MAPLE SAP STRAIGHT FROM THE TREE. BEFORE IT BECOMES SYRUP, IT IS PURE, CLEAN, AND ALMOST WEIGHTLESS, MAKING IT A PERFECT FOUNDATION FOR A BRINE, ONE THAT GENTLY SEASONS AND TENDERIZES WILD BOAR WITHOUT MASKING ITS CHARACTER. FOR THIS DISH, THE BRINED WILD BOAR TENDERLOIN IS COMBINED WITH TURNIPS SOFTENED IN MAPLE SYRUP AND BUTTER; CHARRED CARROTS; AND YOUNG MILKWEED PODS, WHICH LES HAD FROZEN FROM THE SUMMER BEFORE. THE DISH IS TOPPED WITH A MAPLE-MUSTARD SAUCE THAT TIES EVERYTHING TOGETHER.…

THE EXPLORERS CLUB 46 EAST 70TH STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10021 WWW.EXPLORERS.ORG | 212-628-8383 AFRICA Francois Malherbe africa@explorers.org ALASKA Mead Treadwell alaska@explorers.org ATLANTA Mark Hay atlanta@explorers.org AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND Todd Tai anzec@explorers.org BHUTAN Matthew DeSantis bhutan@explorers.org CANADA Jett Britnell canada@explorers.org CHICAGO/GREAT LAKES Deana Weibel, PhD chicago@explorers.org CONTINENTAL EUROPE Ief Winckelmans continentaleurope@explorers.org EAST & SOUTH ASIA Arnaud Humbert eastandsouthasia@explorers.org FLORIDA Tina Chiarelli, PhD, FRGS florida@explorers.org GEORGE ROGERS CLARK David Collette georgerogersclark@explorers.org GREAT BRITAIN & IRELAND Rory Golden greatbritainireland@explorers.org GREATER PIEDMONT James Borton greaterpiedmont@explorers.org HAWAII Gary Bowersox hawaii@explorers.org HONG KONG Adam Francis hongkong@explorers.org LATIN AMERICA Cristián Pérez-Navarro latam@explorers.org MIDDLE EAST Aron Arngrímsson middleeast@explorers.org NEW ENGLAND Lizzie Rosenberger Thome newengland@explorers.org NORTH PACIFIC ALASKA Joshua C. Lewis & Victoria M. Becwar-Lewis northpacificalaska@explorers.org NORTHERN CALIFORNIA Thomas Dietz, PhD northerncalifornia@explorers.org NORWAY Synnøve Marie Kvam Strømsvåg…