Kayaking the Northwest Passage with West Hansen

Wild Ideas Worth Living

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4.7 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 11 February 2025

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the summer of 2023, West Hansen led a team of kayakers, known as The Arctic Cowboys, through the Northwest Passage, making history as the first people to cross it by human power. The journey took them 103 days to complete, during which they encountered polar bears, icebergs, and some of the most intense weather of their lives.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The icebergs were beautiful.
0:04.0	They're much better up close than they are in pictures.
0:07.0	They're multi-colored.
0:08.0	They're not just white.
0:09.0	They're different shades of blue, purple.
0:11.0	There's some yellow sometimes.
0:13.0	It was like an art museum.
0:15.0	A very wonderful art museum.
0:19.0	And they're otherworldly.
0:21.8	They're so large.
0:22.6	I mean, these are the size of buildings,
0:24.4	sometimes the size of small towns.
0:30.6	In the summer of 2023,
0:33.2	West Hanson led a team of kayakers through the Northwest Passage.
0:37.4	This waterway is the northernmost channel between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. West Hanson led a team of kayakers through the Northwest Passage.
0:37.6	This waterway is the northernmost channel between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and it remained
0:42.7	frozen for thousands of years, preventing any crossings until recently.
0:50.0	West and his group, called the Arctic Cowboys, made history that summer as the first people to cross
0:55.8	the passage by human power. It took them 103 days to complete the passage, and along the way
1:02.7	they encountered polar bears, icebergs, and some of the most intense weather of their lives.
1:15.1	I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is wild ideas worth living,
1:21.5	an REI Co-op Studios production presented by Capital One and the REI Co-op MasterCard.
	...

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