The Last First – Through The North West Passage

2013 expedition across the Northwest Passage, THE LAST FIRST, during which a bunch of fearless Irishmen will row 2000 miles through icebergs and polar bears in the most perilous conditions.

There are very few adventure “firsts” left today. The highest mountains have been climbed, the oceans have been crossed and poles have been reached. But high up in the Arctic remains one of the last feats of human endurance yet to be achieved. In July 2013, Kevin Valley, Paul Gleeson, Frank Wolf, Denis Barnet & Ray Zahab will attempt something that has never been done before – crossing the North West Passage in a single season by human power alone. They will row the North West Passage starting in Tuktoyaktuk, NWT and finishing approximately 3000 kilometers later in Pond Inlet, Nunavut.
The quest for the North West Passage alluded mariners for centuries – since Elizabethan times. It was to be the gateway to the orient and the first to conqueror it would be its gatekeeper. The Spanish controlled the South and the British wanted the North. The iconic names of Canadian Geography are the names of the British explorers, the “Sea Dogs” as they were called, willing to risk everything in pursuit of the passage – from Frobisher to Baffin, from Davis to Hudson, from Parry to Franklin, they’d all try to find the passage and they all would fail. It would take the cool, calculating Norwegian, Raold Amundsen, to finally traverse the passage between 1903-06 in his tiny sloop the Gjoa.The North West Passage is arguably the most challenging waterway on earth. No one has traversed the passage in a season under human power.

One possible reason this crew might make it through is demonstrated by NASA satellite imagery:

Production/Interviews/camera/edit: Jan Wellmann

Archive imagery courtesy of many wonderful explorers and brilliant filmmakers!

For more info on the trip see WWW.THELASTFIRST.COM