Announcing the 2013 Explorers Club Annual Award Winners

The Explorers Club is delighted to announce its 2013 Medalists and Award Winners. Come celebrate the evening of March 16, 2013, at the Waldorf Astoria in New York with seven extraordinary individuals who have endured extremes in some of the world’s most sacred places: the highest peaks, deepest oceans, edges of space and confines of caves. The list of awardees is as follows:

EXPLORERS MEDAL
— James Cameron, an artist and engineer whose films like “Titanic” and “Avatar” have long served to enrich the world’s thinking, recently gave mankind break-through technology with the development of a new-generation submersible. The fact that it worked and safely took him all the way to the deepest point on earth (and back) last March will allow many more to follow his blueprint and help chart our final inner-space frontier, the deep ocean.

PRESIDENT’S LEGENDS MEDALS
— John Glenn and Scott Carpenter, the first and second Americans to orbit the earth, not only served science and country through their pioneering Mercury flights which helped win the Cold War, but gave back in spades later in life. Glenn, of course, went on to become a multi-term U.S. senator in Ohio, while Carpenter served as a conduit to transfer scientific knowledge from space to the sea as an aquanaut.

TENZING NORGAY QUADRENNIAL AWARD
— Chhiring Dorje Sherpa has not only helped mankind explore routes on Himalayan peaks sacred and traditional, but gave unselfishly when a critical moment presented itself on K2, the world’s most dangerous mountain. At great risk to his own life, the multi-time Everest summiteer saved a fellow climber from certain death, allowing him to return to home and family.

CITATIONS OF MERIT
— Erden Eruc demonstrated that technology is not always needed to do great things today. After a grueling five years and 11 days, Eruc completed a circumnavigation of the globe by row boat, showing it is still possible to inspire with human power.

— Christos Nicola, a long-time cave explorer, enriched the world through his book, “The Secret of Priest’s Grotto: A Holocaust Survival Story” about how a Jewish family, fleeing the Nazis, lived for two years in a large cave, Popowa Yama, in Ukraine and survived WWII.

SWEENEY MEDAL
— Monika Rogozinska, a journalist and mountaineer, has long been a behind-the scenes powerhouse for The Explorers Club. Rogozinska, of course, established the very successful Polish Chapter in the 1990s and has been Chair since 2009.

More information about The Explorers Club Annual Dinner soon to follow. SAVE THE DATE - MARCH 16, 2013!