By Sam Bass

February 25, 2003 On the first day of the month, explorer Erden Eruç pedaled away from the front steps of REI in Seattle, towing over 100 pounds of gear and food north toward Alaska. His destination: 20,320-foot Mount McKinley, North America's highest peak. Eruç plans to cycle to the base of McKinley by early May, climb it with friends, and then ride back to Seattle. By the time he reaches home, he will have clocked 5490 miles on his odometer, not including the McKinley climb—and that's just stage one of his journey.

Once back in Seattle he plans to row and bicycle around the planet, climbing six of the world's highest peaks as he goes, in a memorial tribute to his close friend, Göran Kropp, a Swedish adventurer and mountaineer known for pushing the boundaries of human potential with his marathon adventure trips. Kropp died last September at the age of 35 when he fell nearly 60 feet during a climb with Eruç in the Frenchman Coulee area near Vantage, Washington. In 1996, Kropp made international headlines for bicycling from his home in Stockholm to Everest Base Camp in Nepal, climbing Everest alone and without supplemental oxygen, and then bicycling back.

During stage two of his memorial adventure, Eruç will row from Seattle to Ecuador, and then cycle to Argentina and climb 22,834-foot Aconcagua. Stage three will be a trans-Pacific row to Irian Jaya, where he'll climb the Carstenz Pyramid, the highest peak in Oceana. Other stages of his journey will include cycling in Nepal and climbing Everest, rowing to the east coast of Africa, cycling to and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, and then rowing through the Red Sea and Suez Canal to climb Russia's Mount Elbrus. On the last leg of his journey, Eruç will paddle across the Atlantic, island hop to Florida, and finish his world tour by bicycling back to Seattle.


"I had been contemplating a human-powered journey around the world for several years," Eruç explains. "My original idea consisted of a multi-sport challenge that involved bicycling, kayaking and rowing, but no summits. But after Göran's accident, I became inspired to climb the highest peaks on six continents in a way which honors his memory and his spirit."

Eruç and friends have formed a charitable non-profit organization called Around-n-Over to support the school that Kropp founded in 1996, the Göran Kropp Bishwa Darshan Primary School in northeastern Nepal. Around-n-Over will also produce educational information and online progress reports about Eruç's journey.

On Saturday, Eruç prepared for a two-day, 65-plus mile ride on the Alaskan Highway over Pine Pass to Dawson Creek by stashing extra butane lighters and making sure his shovel and extra warm layers are accessible. "I will be wearing my gaiters," he said in an e-mail, "in case I have to climb into the high snow banks to get off the road." The gear that Eruç's been hauling behind his Novara Safari touring bicycle includes his personal mountaineering gear and his share of the group equipment for the planned McKinley ascent. At day's end, he sleeps wherever he ends up. "When I found a cheap hotel in Quesnel [B.C.], I decided it was time for a hot tub and a warm meal," he reported via e-mail on February 14. "The night before last, I slept on a haystack."

A lifelong mountaineer and former college rower, Eruç came to the U.S. from Turkey in 1986. After being laid off from his job as a senior project manager for a technical consulting firm, Eruç took a job in the climbing department of the Seattle REI store, which is partially sponsoring his massive undertaking.

When Kropp died on September 30, Eruç's ideas of a global human-powered journey crystallized into a purposeful plan. "My motivation is to keep his spirit alive," he told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer this week. "To me, it means accepting a challenge; we'll give it a good, hearty try. Why not? I'll grow in the process."