Alive and well from PNG

The trip so far has been totally wild.

We flew from PDX to LAX to Nadi, Fiji to Port Moresby, PNG to Hoskins, PNG, where we were picked up by a guy named Bob who owns a “hostel” in Kimbe. The next day, Kyle and Trip went up in a fixed-wing to scout some rivers and give us an idea of where we need to concentrate our efforts. Luckily, the island of New Britain is LOADED with great-looking whitewater and we are stoked to explore.

The next day, we rode in the back of a truck to the trailhead leading to Lake Hargy. A four hour hike in led us to the basecamp established by John Lane and the scientific side of the expedition on the lake’s shore.

Due to spiritual reasons and croc infestation, the lake had very rarely been swum in before and never been boated on before. After a quick ceremony and a chat with the crocs by the resident familial head, Ben, we slid in and went for a paddle. The locals instantly look to the kayaks and began exploring and learning how to paddle and the next day decided to cut down a tree and build their own dugout canoe.


One of the expedition objectives is to explore new areas and discover new underground caves. Yesterday, four of us paddled across the lake, hiked up the first ridge from the lake and peered over the edge into country that has not been touched by man for thousands of years. The hike was super brutal and took us all day, but based on both geology and topography the chances of finding previously undiscovered caves is extremely high. It took us until dark to get back to the lake and we had a SUPER scary night paddle across the lake to basecamp. I was in the dugout canoe with PNG’s version of Rambo who kept spotting crocs and fortunately was able to speak to them in his native language and convince them to leave us alone.

Tomorrow, Trip and I are hitchhiking to the end of the road and then hiking 3 days into a village called Lei Lei. Trip and Kyle saw some clean, stout slides near the village and we are headed in to scout them out. It should be very interesting to head into a village 3 days away from any road. We plan to spend about a week on that mission before heading back to basecamp on Lake Hargy.



From the wilderness,


Andy