October 26, 2004
ARGENTINA
Photo: Rodrigo Jordan
“Risk is present always and everywhere. This shouldn’t scare us, but it should force us to work with excellence.” -Rodrigo Jordan
Dear Friends,
I have some exciting news! Since I spoke to you last I have been to Ecuador and Argentina. As you can see, I have a new name and format! I was Mr. Filmtrips.com, now I am Mr. LiveYourAdventure.com. The mainstay of Adventure Alerts has not changed. I’m still gonna send out inspiring stories and fun photos. But I’m adding some new features, like AdventureViews, and new photo galleries. Also, the navigation of the site has been dramatically streamlined so you can click around much faster.
Let
me tell you more about AdventureViews. I have had blast preparing
the first few! Every week I will have a new interview with an adventurous person
on the subject of adventure. This week we speak with Rodrigo Jordan,
(see photo and quote above) a Chilean explorer I came across when I was in Argentina.
He led a four-man team for 54 days, exploring some of Antarctica’s previously
uncharted mountains. He teaches how to apply the principles of mountaineering
to everyday life. (He also helps out kids. You gotta love this guy.)
More AdventureViews coming soon:
• Phd. on Passion with Craig Nathanson
• Shaman from Ecuador, Inti
• A Human Oxymoron with my pal Joel (the Adventurous
Accountant)
• What the Bleep Do We Know? Sleeper hit movie with Dr.
Joe Dispenza
Check out this week’s new gallery on South
American Mannequins (below).
I found them all over Buenos Aires. They were so weird I had to take some shots.
Despite what I said in my last Adventure
Alert, my book Driving to the End of the World is
not done. I’m nowhere near where I wanted to be by now, but I’m
getting there! Also coming in the next few weeks, Tele-classes (Travel writing,
Adventure travel, Following your passion, and Travel photography). Keep checking
your emails...
I’ll keep you posted!
Mark
Recently Chilean explorer/educator Rodrigo Jordan led a four-member expedition to Antarctica. It took the team 54 days to traverse 400km of previously unexplored mountains. In this interview, Jordan tell us of some of the trip’s challenges, his personal commitment to excellence, and how he’s used his experiences to help and inspire others.
LiveYourAdventue: What
was your motivation in taking on this expedition?
Rodrigo Jordan: The expedition explored the east side of the
Ellsworth Mountains, one of the last unexplored places on earth. In 1995 I climbed
Mt. Vinson (4,879 m), the highest peak in the Antarctic, and saw off to the
north this unexplored part of the mountain chain. That produced in me a desire
to explore this unknown place. I felt then a bit of what explorers like James
Cook, Edmund Hillary, or Roald Amundsen must have felt in their lifetimes.
LYA: What was the most
challenging aspect of this adventure?
RJ: The fact that we completed the expedition without outside
support. We were dropped off at the extreme northern edge of the mountain chain
and had to pass through it without any extra supplies, without any airdrops.
We had to carry everything, our food, the tents. And since the route was difficult,
climbing and passing through the mountains, crossing 16 different glaciers,
we had to take ropes, harnesses, ice axes and helmets. That’s a lot of
weight to carry, about 140 kilos each at the beginning. I don’t know if
that was the most difficult part, but it did demand of each one of us dedication
to excellence.
LYA: The average person
may have trouble understanding the value of a risky undertaking like this. Why
do you feel this expedition was important?
RJ: We decided a long time ago that this expedition was about
more than just traveling through an unexplored place, and so we developed a
program to spread the news. Before the expedition began, we organized a contest
for school children to prepare a website explaining Antarctica to their classmates.
More than 120 projects were presented by 240 students from schools throughout
Chile, especially in underprivileged areas. A jury chose the best website and
now it has been published by Chile’s ministry of education. And the two
students who won the contest traveled to Antarctica and shared three days with
us at Patriot Hills, the camp where we completed the expedition. This kind of
activity is important to demonstrate that expeditions like this are more than
an exploration of new places, nor are they conducted for their scientific value
alone. We also collected snow and rock samples, and took altitude readings that
will help produce accurate maps. But more important than that are the values
involved in the expedition, the leadership skills, the teamwork, effective communication,
the friendship and solidarity. These values are important in any human enterprise,
but this way of demonstrating them is very attractive to children. That’s
why we set up our own website as well. On it we showed not just our progress
along the route, but things like flora and fauna of the Antarctic, how people
live and work there, the climate problems, all the educational elements that
go way beyond the sporting character of the trip. We were genuinely surprised
by the emails we received during the expedition. The people emailing us saw
the expedition not just as an effort by a few crazy guys, but something representative
of the human spirit. People wrote to us that what we were doing was important
for humanity, that in the midst of all their everyday worries our expedition
was pushing back the frontiers of what we’re capable of as human beings.
Many people were caught up in our spirit of adventure, something I hadn’t
imagined.
LYA: An adventure brings
rewards, but also risks. How do you deal with those risks, and how can the rest
of us use those strategies in our everyday lives?
RJ: Risk is present always and everywhere and that produces
concern within us. This doesn’t scare us, but it does force us to work
with excellence. This Antarctic expedition was different from those I’ve
undertaken as a mountaineer, because this time we had to cross 400 km, with
45 different camps. When you climb Everest you only have three or four camps.
And the temperature reaching as low as -30 degrees C to -40 degrees C, we had
to study carefully each item – the ropes, the food, the sledges, the tents,
the communications system, the food preparations – the because we realized
that each element had to perform to 100 percent. That adds up to excellence
in the overall effort. If not, you run a big risk. We faced difficult stretches,
with steep descents down sixty degree slopes, lowering the sledges with ropes.
We also had to cross complex crevasse fields. Nature is very demanding if you
are going to survive, and forces you to work with diligence and to attend to
every detail.
That easily translates into everyday life, into everything that we do –
our work, our family life, our studies. We have to do it with perfection. And
not just because it helps you survive the daily risks in the city, but because
there’s a great spiritual satisfaction that comes from having done something
and knowing you did it well. What gave us the greatest joy at the end of the
expedition wasn’t that we had covered distance, or that we were the first
to do so, but simply that deep, personal satisfaction that we had done something
well.
LYA: Unfortunately you
lost your friend and teammate, Victor Hugo Trujillo, in an avalanche during
your 1986 attempt at Mount Everest. How did his death affect you and the rest
of your team?
RJ: At the time it was a great shock, because we were young
and we thought we were invincible. I now realize it was just a case of bad timing.
Sadly, a cornice (hardened snow at the edge of a precipice) that had been there
for many years came loose when Victor Hugo was crossing on the opposite side
on the way to camp 5. It generated a huge avalanche that took him with it.
The experience showed us how failure, even tragic failure like this, can teach
humility. We abandoned the expedition. To carry out an expedition like this,
you need good physical training and technical preparation, but you also need
to be healthy in spiritual and intellectual terms. Losing a companero really
affected us. In fact, four of the climbers retired from mountaineering after
that. For them, reaching new summits or exploring new places wasn’t worth
losing a teammate. For those of us who continued to climb, his death was a great
lesson. From then on, it made us do everything always to the utmost, with everything
we have, so that this won’t happen again. Fortunately, we’ve since
completed many other expeditions and, although we’ve had problems and
difficulties, we haven’t had to mourn another life. I carried Victor Hugo’s
scarf with me on subsequent expeditions, and it is still with me.
LYA: Why do you think
you became an adventurer? Who inspired you?
RJ: I started reading "Tintin" at a very young age.
He was a great adventurer, a wonderful role model. I wanted to be like Tintin.
Later I was able to read magazines such as National Geographic and watch wildlife
programs on television. I became a fan of Jacques Cousteau and David Attenborough.
I wanted to do that, live amongst nature. Mountain climbing came later in life.
LYA: You teach a university
course called “Innovation Management”. What is that, and how does
it tie into your life as an explorer?
RJ: My doctorate is in the same field, focusing on how innovation
can improve the life of the urban poor in South America. I’ve always believed
that people have the capability to create new things, but in many ways the social
and economic structures, the work environment, all combine to diminish the capacity
all of us have to innovate. Yet that’s the most potent thing we have as
human beings. Perhaps that’s what contributes to rebellion in young people.
Now that I’m older, what I try to do in my university course is show students
that they can do new things, that they can be explorers, whether in the arts,
cinema or business, or in sports or other outdoor activity. This exalts the
human spirit.
LYA: Clearly teamwork
is critical to the success of an expedition. How did you take that and translate
it into the business world through your company, Vertical?
RJ: We’ve worked with people from throughout South and
Central America, and when we began in 1992 it was very difficult. People in
these companies didn’t see the usefulness and benefits that a program
in teamwork, leadership, and effective communication was going to have on their
bottom line. Yet today many companies, non-governmental organizations, and government
ministries have realized that social skills are just as important as technical
skills in getting the job done. Unfortunately, those skills aren’t taught
in the schools and universities of South America. If you tour the universities,
you’ll find they teach technical skills to architects, doctors and engineers,
but they don’t teach anything about leadership or how to relate to fellow
workers. It may seem that values are not important in the business world. Yet
in recent years they become a necessity, and today we’re working with
many companies on programs where the principal themes are values, teamwork,
honesty, discipline and excellence.
LYA: Tell us why you
and Marcelo Grifferos founded the non-profit organization Los Maitenes, and
what you hope it will teach children.
RJ: I’m very thankful for the opportunities that we’ve
had, and it seemed to me and my business partner, Marcelo Grifferos, that this
was a way of giving something back to society. In some ways, we’re doing
what Claudio Lucero did with his university classes. By taking underprivileged
school children to the outdoors, we’re helping evoke something new in
the spirit of these young people. They come from urban environments where the
schools have no resources to take them to the mountains, the ocean, the rivers
or the lakes. So we take them out to get to know nature. If a child doesn’t
experience nature, that child probably won’t understand it. And if a child
doesn’t comprehend nature, they’re not going to love it. If they
don’t love it, they won’t care for it. This is a long process. If
their lives are changed by this contact with the world of trees and mountains
and rivers in 10 or 15 years they are going to want to protect nature.
At the same time we’ve helped these children develop the same skills we
teach business executives. We help them strengthen their individual ability
to make decisions and not let others make decisions for them, to search out
their own path in life, to become leaders, to communicate effectively, to express
their feelings, to cooperate with others, to care for others.
LYA: Many people fear
change. Why do you see it as an adventure?
RJ: For some reason we’ve grown to believe that it’s
economic and social stability and security that give us happiness. And so we
believe that we’ll find true happiness after we finish traveling along
the path that leads through school and university studies to obtaining a good,
well-paid job. That’s what we consider stability. Yet what happens in
life – and it happens in the mountains as well, but more dramatically
and more repeatedly – is a series of changes. Life is full of changes,
and we’ve got to learn to live with change, not against change. Change
becomes part of what we expect, and thus we learn to live with it. Instead of
something dangerous and difficult, adventure is what we’re living every
day. So the program showed that change can be a highly rewarding adventure.
To learn more about the Antarctica expedition visit: www.antarcticaexpedition.cl
Dr. Jordan’s website: www.vertical.cl
His email, jordan@vertical.cl
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