Adaptability and Endurance
MISSION BRIEF:
Location: Vatnajökull glacier and Grímsfjöll volcano.
Duration: 6 nights and 7 days
Scientific skills: Physics, theory of relativity, glaciology, meteorology, futurism, interstellar travel
Expeditionary skills: Adaptability, endurance, mountaineering, ice climbing, glacier driving, scenario planning, survival and leadership.
Historical relevance: Training in some of the same locations as the Interstellar film was shot.
Category 4 Expedition
Adaptability Quotient (AQ) has been listed as the most important skill of the coming decade by Harvard professors. Just like astronauts need to prepare for a different reality once they enter a new World, we have just entered a new decade here on Earth. A decade that has already presented us with a different reality. We have entered a changed World where we are dealing with a pandemic, with more severe consequences of climate change and new technologies like AI disrupting almost every industry on the planet. This expedition is a one week intensive training mission that will prepare you for the unknown and the unexpected.
We are heading onto Iceland's largest glacier Vatnajökull together with polar explorer and mountaineer Vilborg Arna Gissurardottir. Vilborg has climbed the seven summits and walked solo to the South Pole and she will train the participants not only in polar exploration, mountaineering and survival but more importantly in endurance. How does it profoundly change you and your perspective on life to walk alone for 60 days across the solitude of Antarctica?
The volatility of the constantly changing environment is the base for this expedition. We will test different methods to adapt and to conquer gravity, including snow shoes, skis, ice axes and modified super jeeps. We explore not only the changeability of the space around us but also the relativity of time, both in terms of physics and in terms of our every day life, putting the now in context with the past and the future.
The ice will tell us a story. A story of the past since before man, and an unsettling story from the future. At the end of the expedition we will relax in a geothermally heated sauna at a top of a volcano in the middle of the glacier. A truly surreal place. There we will learn how astronauts use scenario planning and how we can apply that to future studies. How do we plan for the unknown and what are the knowns for the next 50-100 years on Earth?
Our expedition vehicles will be a heavily modified 49” Mercedes Benz Sprinter as well as custom built Toyota Hilux vehicles from Arctic Trucks, the main provider of expedition vehicles in Antarctica. Our accommodation during the expedition will be tents, igloos and a mountain cabin.
This expedition qualifies as a preparation for the First Man Antarctica Expedition.
Trainers: Vilborg Arna Gissurardottir Head of Mountaineering and Survival, Hjortur Smarason, Founder and Principal of S.A.L.T.
Next start date: March 14th 2021 from Reykjavik, Iceland
LIMITED SEATS!
Exploring the Relativity of Time
Was it only a week, if you gained a year's worth of knowledge? Take lessons from the future and raise your AQ significantly on the Interstellar Expedition.