Ep. 373: Climbing in North Korea - Woolly Mammoths - Nepal & Siberia - George Kourounis
Adventure Sports Podcast
Curt Linville
4.6 • 580 Ratings
🗓️ 10 May 2018
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
One of our favorite recurring guests, George Kourounis, is back on the show today. George recently returned from Nepal where he visited Everest Base Camp in the Himalayas to film a TV show. They decided to try visiting the base camp with no acclimatization. So they took a helicopter up with no time to adjust. George immediately experienced the effects of hypoxia during this trip. George was also fortunate enough to meet Kancha Sherpa on this helicopter ride. Kancha Sherpa is the last surviving member of Sir Edmond Hillary's 1953 expedition to be the first people to reach the summit of Everest.
On our last show with George, he was preparing to head to North Korea for a rare opportunity to mountain trek, climb and camp. He was approved by the government and was able to travel there in May of 2017. He fills us in on what it was like to be a western-world guest in this secretive country during tumultuous political times. His experience is an interesting one that most of us never get to hear much less experience. Listen in to hear about what the mountains and surroundings are like over there.
George tells about his continued trips to volcanoes including 11,384 ft Mt Nyiragongo which is an active volcano in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He explains that the lake nearby, Lake Kivu, which is susceptible to exploding due to the vast amounts of dissolved carbon dioxide at the bottom. The volcano holds the world's largest boiling lake of lava.
He traveled down the Road of Bones to visit a village in the middle of Siberia, Oymyakon, which is known as the coldest place on earth. He tells us a story about visiting a preserved woolly mammoth frozen in the permafrost and when no one was looking, George snapped off a little mammoth to have a taste. Listen in to hear what that experience was like for him.
Then we discussed the difficulty of ice climbing on icebergs to place satellite tracking devices on them for tracking the path of the icebergs as they float through the ocean.
It's never a dull hour when our friend George Kourounis joins us on the show.
www.youtube.com/user/gkourounis
www.twitter.com/georgekourounis
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| 0:00.0 | Behind the metal door, they had the fully intact frozen head of a 10,000-year-old woolly mammoth. |
| 0:09.0 | The tusks, the hair, the flesh, the whole head was intact and frozen, and has been there for thousands of years. |
| 0:17.0 | And it was amazing. And when no one was looking, I broke a little piece off and I had to try it because I wanted to taste it. |
| 0:25.2 | Episode 373. |
| 0:27.4 | Today we talk about Nepal, Siberia, climbing in North Korea, and we even discuss what it's like to taste Woolly Mammoth. |
| 0:34.7 | All this and more with George Carunus. |
| 0:37.1 | This episode is sponsored in part |
| 0:38.9 | by Canada Pet Food. You know your dog is the best part of your adventure, and a great way to keep him |
| 0:43.9 | happy and healthy is by feeding him the best pet food. That's why you need to check out Canada |
| 0:48.1 | Pet Food. Canada is an independent and family-owned pet food company who uses the same care |
| 0:53.1 | and the same quality ingredients they want for their own pets when making their pet foods. Check out canada.com |
| 0:58.9 | slash podcast. You're listening to the Adventure Sports podcast brought to you by 180 Tech. We talk |
| 1:05.5 | with adventurers from around the globe to bring you the inspiration and motivation you need to |
| 1:09.8 | get started in the outdoors or to |
| 1:11.4 | keep you moving if you're already there. Now here's your host, Kurt Linville. Hey friends, Kurt here. I have |
| 1:17.4 | George Carunis on the line today and I'm excited to catch up with him again and find out what he's |
| 1:23.6 | been up to. As you may recall from previous episodes, George is a just worldwide |
| 1:29.6 | renowned explorer who's made a career out of kind of being an adventurer for hire. He's the |
| 1:37.0 | chairman of the Explorers Club. He is the explorer in residence for the Royal Canadian Geographic Society. |
| 1:47.1 | He's traveled to over 65 countries, |
| 1:54.7 | and he likes to go to our planet's most crazy places where Mother Nature is spitting out her worst, |
| 1:59.3 | and to experience that and record it in a way that he can share it with the world. And so, |
... |
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