In a break from previous formats, our March dinner will provide members an opportunity to share their most recent projects with other chapter members. Come prepared to explain where you’ve been and the exploration you’re proudest about. Ground rules: • Six minutes per presentation; maximum 8-10 talks.   • No more than a five-year look-back. Current projects only please. Continue reading>>

Join Cassandra Brooks as she tells stories from the bottom of the world and her efforts to protect it. Brooks will share imagery and stories from her five research expeditions to Antarctica, including the challenges of conducting science operations and media in the windiest, coldest, and most extreme environment on earth. She will also share the incredible story of how she worked alongside a coalition of millions to protect the Ross Sea, Antarctica and how it now stands as the world’s largest marine protected area. Come and listen and learn about Antarctica, and how beyond its extreme beauty, it also… Continue reading>>

On October 13,1972, a Uruguayan plane carrying a Rugby team and their friends crashed in the Andes. Sixteen of the 45 passengers survived 72 days trapped on a glacier, isolated from civilization and having to resort to eating the bodies of the dead to survive. In those 72 days, they endured extreme cold temperatures, avalanches, starvation and dehydration and ultimately two of them, Parrado and Canessa, climbed out of the Andes to bring helicopters to rescue the other survivors.  On February 12, 2005, Ricardo Peña (left in the photo), mountain guide and husband of RMEC member Ulyana Horodyskyj, discovered the jacket,… Continue reading>>

An RMEC encore event ….. Andrew and Jacquie McKenna have graciously again invited chapter members and guests to join them in a fall kick-off celebration at their ranch near Ward located at 47517 Peak to Peak Highway. (Directions forthcoming.) Time: 12 PM, with mine tour to follow. As an added bonus, Club member Markus Raschke invites us to again tour his nearby 19th-century White Raven silver mine. Here’s how it looked in 1918: Continue reading>>

Giraffe are icons of the African wilderness, but they are under significant conservation threat. With only 117,000 individuals widely distributed in isolated populations across 21 different African countries, giraffe face diverse challenges throughout their range, which require diverse solutions to address them.  The Giraffe Conservation Foundation, with a collaborative international team of scientists and local stakeholders, is spearheading groundbreaking giraffe conservation initiatives to understand the ecological needs of giraffe, assess threats across their range, and design creative solutions to these conservation issues. Combining advanced technology with ground-level understandings of giraffe ecology, Brown and others are turning science into meaningful conservation outcomes. … Continue reading>>

James is an acclaimed photographer featured in The Human Element and Chasing Ice. He’s a scientist, adventurer, president and founder of the Colorado-based Extreme Ice Survey and Earth Vision Institute. Environmental photographer and thinker James Balog explores the crucial concerns of our time. In this presentation, he will share stunning images and provocative ideas from his latest book, The Human Element: A Time Capsule from the Anthropocene.  National Geographic editor emeritus for science and the environment, Dennis Dimick, calls the book “…a profound statement by a force of nature on the forces of nature. The scope, and versatility of his vision is without compare.”  His vision brings… Continue reading>>

Alan Arnette climbs, coaches, talks, and writes. He advocates for Alzheimer’s patients, caregivers, and researchers at every opportunity. As Alan saw his mom, Ida, go through the Alzheimer’s journey, he said it took her life and changed him forever. So after a 30-year career in management roles with Hewlett-Packard, he took early retirement in 2007 to oversee the care of Ida, and his life purpose became serving as an Alzheimer’s Advocate. At the beginning of his career, he focused on work but at age 38 discovered his true passion was climbing the world’s highest peaks. He has completed over 37 major… Continue reading>>

On December 11th, 2021, Dylan Taylor flew aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket on NS-19 and became the 606th human to enter space and the 592ndhuman to cross the Karman Line. Dylan will discuss his experience on the spaceflight, as well as what the future holds for human spaceflight and exploration. Dylan is a Rocky Mountain Explorers Club member and CEO of Voyager Space, a multinational space exploration firm based in Denver. Dylan is also the founder of Space for Humanity, a global non-profit dedicated to democratizing access to space.  Full bio available at www.dylantaylor.org Read the interview by Leonard David: https://www.leonarddavid.com/my-flight-on-new-shepard-space-angel-reaches-new-heights/ Continue reading>>

Rick Ridgeway has experienced many adventures in his life, including the first American ascent of K2 and the first crossing on foot of a corner of Tibet so remote no outsider had ever seen it. In telling these stories, Rick also describes his shift from someone fascinated by wild places to someone dedicated to saving them. Rick was kind to reschedule with RMEC when his Patagonia Boulder store appearance was canceled due to Covid.  Learn more about Rick here: rickridgeway.com Continue reading>>

In her presentation, Explorers Club member Gaelin Rosenwaks will take you on a journey from satellite tagging bluefin tuna in the Western Atlantic Ocean to drilling ice cores in the frozen Bering Sea to the bottom of the Blue Hole in Belize, in order to illuminate cutting-edge scientific research being conducted to understand the complexity of our ocean ecosystems.  Driven by her academic background in marine science and conservation, Gaelin hopes to heighten people’s awareness and sense of responsibility to preserve the health of our planet. By employing photography and video to document her exploration, she hopes to inspire people to… Continue reading>>

Join fellow Club member Douglas Duncan for a personal guided tour of the winter night sky at the Fiske Planetarium on the University of Colorado Boulder campus. Fiske opened in 1975 with a generous donation from Wallace Franz Fiske, Class of 1917. The 65-foot diameter dome is the largest planetarium between Chicago and Los Angeles and seats 206 guests. The 8K Sky-Skan projection system, cutting-edge content, dazzling visuals, and fantastic sound system are unparalleled. Plus, the Fiske has a MegaStar projector that shows 10 million stars and the Milky Way, creating one of the most beautiful indoor skies you’ll ever see. Dr.… Continue reading>>

Ian Billick, executive director of the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL) near Crested Butte, will discuss the history and future of field science within the context of exploration and discovery. He will quickly move through the age of exploration starting with the fall of Constantinople, through economy botany, to the emergence of modern science, and talk about how a confluence of sensing technology, deployment platforms, and big data is fundamentally changing the process of discovery. Ian started his love affair with RMBL as a summer student in 1988. After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of California-San Diego for field… Continue reading>>

Climber, filmmaker, photographer, and activist, Jake Norton, has spent most of his life in the high mountains and remote regions of the world. From helping discover George Mallory’s remains on Mount Everest to following the footsteps of Sir Ernest Shackleton across South Georgia Island, unearthing 3,500 year old human remains in cliffside caves high in the Himalaya to following the Ganges River 1,600 miles from source to sea, to reaching the summit of Everest three times, the Evergreen, Colorado, explorer has been blessed in his 47 years to traverse the globe and share his stories far and wide. Learn more… Continue reading>>

Join us on Tuesday, September 14 at 12 PM MDT as Club archivist Lacey Flint shows us some of her favorite artifacts in the Club’s Library at HQ. Note: this will be earlier in the day so we don’t make Lacey stay at work until dark. Wait ’til you see Teddy Roosevelt’s Magic Lantern slides. Continue reading>>

Learn more about this new book, a riveting history of the momentous Friendship 7 space flight that put America back into the space race. If the United States couldn’t catch up to the Soviets in space, how could it compete with them on Earth? That was the question facing John F. Kennedy at the height of the Cold War—a moment when the Soviet Union built the wall in Berlin, tested nuclear bombs more destructive than any in history, and beat the US to every major milestone in space. The race to the heavens seemed a race for survival—and America was… Continue reading>>

On April 25, 2015, TEC member Jim Davidson was climbing Mount Everest when a 7.8 magnitude earthquake released avalanches all around him and his team, destroying their only escape route and trapping them at nearly 20,000 feet. It was the largest earthquake in Nepal in 81 years and killed nearly 8,900 people. That day also became the deadliest in the history of Everest, with 18 people losing their lives on the mountain. Suspenseful and engrossing, The Next Everest portrays the experience of living through the biggest disaster to ever hit the mountain. Davidson’s background in geology and environmental science makes him uniquely… Continue reading>>

Whenever Mother Nature is throwing a temper tantrum, George Kourounis is usually not far away. For over two decades, he’s been documenting extreme forces of nature and natural disasters worldwide, from chasing tornadoes and hurricanes to climbing down inside active volcanoes. He’s appeared on countless television programs on The Weather Channel, Discovery, National Geographic, Netflix, Science Channel and more.  He often works with scientists to gather data and samples from places that are too difficult or dangerous to access themselves, and has given 5 TEDx talks and addressed the United Nations Environmental Emergencies Forum. George is the Chair of the Canadian Chapter… Continue reading>>