Adventures Less Traveled

With no government presence, rampant cartel activity, and deadly terrain, the Darién Gap is one of the most dangerous migration routes on Earth—despite being less than 100 miles long. Every day, thousands of migrants from over 50 countries risk drowning, starvation, or violence as they attempt to cross this lawless stretch of jungle in search of a better life. We often see statistics in the news—b...

Professional snowboarder and civil engineer Nathalia dos Reis Monteiro shares how she transitioned from training on sand dunes in Brazil to competing on snow-covered slopes in North America. As a full-time engineer in New York City, she reveals how she balances her demanding job with Olympic-level training, and how she founded Brazil Snow, a nonprofit supporting Brazilian winter athletes. This epi...

Chad Caruso made history by pushing his skateboard across America for 3,162 miles over 57 days, setting the world record as the first person to do so. In addition to this incredible feat, he has also completed various vlog challenges on his YouTube channel such as 30 tricks/30 days and 50 tricks/50 states. GUEST LINKS - Natural High Non-Profit: https://www.naturalhigh.org/ - YouTube: https://www.y...

Tom Turcich is the 10th person to walk around the world, and his loyal companion - Savannah - made history as the first dog to walk around the world. She offered a constant presence that helped fill the all-too-common void of isolation and loneliness as he walked over 28,000 miles over a seven year period across six continents. There were no motors and no pedals, just deliberate, human-powered exp...

You may recognize Andrew Mortensen from a previous episode when he cycled from Neah Bay, Washington in the United States down to Patagonia during COVID back in 2020. Here we are 4 years later in 2024, and he's done it again. This time adding 25 more countries to his repertoire from Spain to Singapore, bringing his grand total to over 27,000 cycling miles across 37 countries - officially circumnavi...

It's one thing to climb the tallest mountain in the world. It's another thing to have the world's highest black tie dinner party atop it. Neil Laughton is an "adventureholic" whose expeditions range from the classic seven-summits ascents, to the unusual such as rowing a bathtub around the Solent, or hosting a game of cricket on the geographic south pole, or driving the world's first street-legal f...

Edd Sorenson gives his take on the balance between the order of having rigid training and fundamentals and the chaos of exploring the unknown. GUEST LINKS - Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edd_Sorenson - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/CaveAdventurers - Cave Adventurers Website: https://www.caveadventurers.com/ - Cave Adventurers Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/divecaveadven...

Oftentimes cave diving doesn't go as planned, and when it doesn't, the most likely outcome is a slow inevitable death. Wedged between narrow gaps in caves with no means of escaping, divers become trapped and typically die by hypocapnia as a result. Of the individuals who are found and returned to the surface, almost none of them come out alive (body rescue). The overwhelming majority of them end u...

More people have been to outer space than to the underwater caves that Jill Heinerth has explored. She is world-renowned cave diver credited with exploration of both the deepest and longest caves in the world, the first ever descent of iceberg caves in Antarctica, and helped create the first ever 3-D map of an underwater cave. She has documented her discoveries through various TV series, documenta...

Where are my adventure book worms at?? My 2024 reading list covering exploration, resiliency, escape, research, and everything in between! EPISODE LINKS - Charlie Walker JRE #1832: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0s6MNrgR48HxhoZpLZaJUn - Yeonmi Park JRE #1691: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0G5o6GYjWgbSvKG3W2W2x OUTLINE (00:00) - Introduction (01:30) - Endurance - Alfred Lansing (03:00) - On Ro...

Few people on earth have ever seen erupting magma from an active volcano, been to North Korea, or been to the Mount Erebus volcano on Antarctica. One man has been to all three while pioneering academic research in the field of Volcanology - Dr. Clive Oppenheimer. He discusses the technical aspects of his field with respect to the importance of volcanoes and how to measure their activity, along wit...

And just like that, 2023 has come and gone and the first year of the Adventures Less Traveled podcast in the books! An overview of guests and their respective topics, humorous mistakes along the way, top takeaways, and what to expect in 2024 is all discussed. PODCAST FEEDBACK FORM: https://forms.gle/UZBJT6Bm9EpoL57h6 PODCAST INFO - Podcast Website: https://adventures-less-traveled.com - Spotify: h...

During her studies at Penn State, a Sociology professor told Nicole Heker to "unlearn everything you know" during a lecture in order to form opinions of other cultures through first-hand experience. She took this to heart and set off on a cycling trip in 2018 from Thailand to Spain, crossing through the Middle East on the Pamir Highway. She has experienced the highest of highs, directing non-profi...

This week we dive deeper into the story of Into The Wild, the account of Christopher McCandless along with background on the Stampede Trail and origins of Bus 142. PODCAST FEEDBACK FORM: https://forms.gle/UZBJT6Bm9EpoL57h6 PODCAST INFO - Podcast Website: https://adventures-less-traveled.com - Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3LpB7vI - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/adventures-less-...

Ian Borowski is an adventure filmmaker based out of Fairbanks, Alaska. Ian was quite possibly the last person to ever visit Bus 142 from the story of Christopher McCandless, made famous in the movie Into The Wild, and he documented his entire journey to get there. We discuss this, along with other equally impressive feats Ian has accomplished ranging from swimming in the Arctic Ocean, ice skating...

In the spirit of Halloween, this week's Journal entry revolves around the mystery of one man, Percy Fawcett, and his unquenchable thirst for discovery for a civilization much more advanced than our own - the Lost City of Z. PODCAST FEEDBACK FORM: https://forms.gle/UZBJT6Bm9EpoL57h6 PODCAST INFO - Podcast Website: https://adventures-less-traveled.com - Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3LpB7vI - Apple...

Veronica Skotnes lives her life at sea on a 42' boat up in the Arctic Circle near Finnmark, Norway. She works to clean marine waste from the Norwegian coast and helps log trash to better track and identify their origins in an effort to further ocean conservation. She has lived in her boat since 2020 when her life was twisted upside down from COVID. We discuss her work, what it's like to live on a...

We hear stories all too often of people who venture into the wilderness and don't make it out alive. Instead of chastising these people, I want to take a particular example from an article someone sent me and learn from it. A woman was hiking along the Appalachian Trail, got lost and didn't survive, despite only being a few hundred yards away from where rescue teams were looking for her. I...

Kayleigh (Kay) Grant is a professional shark diver based out of Kona, Hawaii who is the co-founder of a Kaimana Ocean Safari. She is actively involved in raising awareness of ocean conservation and the realities of the shark ecosystem. We discuss the wildfires in Hawaii, what it's like to swim with sharks, and common misconceptions about sharks and their associated risk. GUEST LINKS - Kaimana Ocea...

Journal Entries (JE) are short, informal monologues during the "off weeks" that there are not guest interviews. They are meant to be snapshots that cover everything and anything pertaining to adventure at a particular moment in time - from news and current events around the world to behind the scenes content or general updates related to this podcast. This inaugural Journal Entry segment...

Andrew Mortensen was quite possibly one of the first people to foresee the inevitable economic destruction of COVID, working as a financial analyst for a major airline around the time of the initial wave. With graduate school on the horizon and a stroke of fortuitous timing, Andrew seized an opportunity amid the chaos to ride his bike across the USA from Neah Bay, WA to Yorktown, VA. He soon reali...

Rich DeRose is a U.S. Army veteran who served overseas in Iraq. We discuss the impact of September 11, 2001 and how that parlayed into Rich's decision to enlist in the military. We cover mental health, returning to civilian life, and triathlons. GUEST LINKS - Instagram: @the_richard_d PODCAST INFO - Podcast Website: https://adventures-less-traveled.com - Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3LpB7vI - Apple P...

Laura Möller and Antonia (Toni) Staacke set out to ride their bikes from Argentina to Alaska when tragedy struck them roughly halfway through. Toni crashed and suffered horrific adventure-ending injuries to her skull and collarbone, effectively ending the mission. We discuss the highs and ultimate lows of the "longest ride", what is was like to communicate such adversity to friends & family an...

Sean Tracy is a U.S. Navy veteran who served as a Search and Rescue (SAR) Swimmer and parlayed his military experience into other high-intensity pursuits. He is the first and only person to complete an expedition from the lowest point (Death Valley) to the highest point (Mt. Denali) in North America. He began with a 3,600-mile bike tour to traverse between the two locations, and proceeded to summi...

Damian Browne is collectively defined as an extreme adventurer. In 2022, he set the record as being the first person to row a boat across the Atlantic Ocean from New York City to Galway, Ireland, covering nearly 3,000 nautical miles. Shockingly, this was not his first time - in 2018, he rowed a boat from Antigua to the Canary Islands, making him one of very few people to ever row both East-to-West...