The Inside Story: News from The Royal Canadian Geographical Society Expeditions: Mountain mystery Research: Testing the water Geo-literacy: The footloose geographer Where are they now: A good investment

Skiing blind and listening to avalanches and seracs falling off mountains on either side of them, Peter Hudson and fellow expedition members Tom Furst, Pierre Hungr and Matt Mueller strove to ascend Mount Vancouver, in the Yukon's St. Elias Mountains, over 19 days last spring. For all but three of those days, they huddled in tents or trudged along in whiteouts, relying on GPS waypoints set along the route, eyes glued to their compasses.

"Our life was like the inside of a ping-pong ball," recalls Hudson. Heavy snowfall forced the mountaineers to shovel out their camp regularly or risk being buried within hours. When the skies briefly cleared, they had to break trail in knee-to-thigh-deep snow. In the end, the relentless snowstorms of the St. Elias Mountains and dwindling food supplies forced them to retreat to the Alaskan coast, where they were picked up by boat.

The trek, funded in part by The Royal Canadian Geographical Society, was Hudson's second attempt to scale the mountain — and solve the mystery of its exact elevation. His first attempt, in 2005, fell apart due to personality conflicts among team members.

Despite these misfortunes, the 26-year-old environmental engineer from Vancouver has not given up on his goal. Mount Vancouver, which has three summits, is listed as the seventh highest mountain in Canada, with reports of heights ranging from 4,785 to 4,812 metres. American and Canadian geological surveys of its southern peak, which rises on the Yukon-Alaska border, differ by about 100 metres. Hudson would like to collect GPS data from each peak to determine its precise elevation — information that could move the mountain into sixth position. "I can't believe that we wouldn't know in this day and age," he says. "You'd think that we'd know the exact height of at least the top 10 peaks."

While Hudson and his friends ponder the possibility of returning to the St. Elias Mountains next year, they are relating their adventures at public presentations at outdoor and alpine clubs in Vancouver. "A failed expedition is still a story," says Hudson, "and people like to hear it."

It's also a lesson in logistics, survival and personal strength. Reflecting on the challenges of the 2006 expedition, Hudson says he was amazed at how well the team worked together. "Bad weather will tear a team apart, but I think we held up really well."

Monique Roy-Sole

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Many of the small lakes that dot Alberta's Peace-Athabasca Delta, one of the largest freshwater deltas in the world, were created by spring ice-jam floods along the Peace River. But climate change and the regulated flow of water through a hydro dam at the river's headwater have decreased the number of jams, drying up some of the delta's marshy areas.

In March 2005, Suzanne Jarvis collected sediment cores from the area's frozen lakes. Analysis of the muddy samples will allow the master's student in environmental studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., and recipient of The Royal Canadian Geographical Society Studentship in Northern Geography, to reconstruct the flood frequency of the Peace River in response to climate changes over the past millennium.

Jarvis's research will expand knowledge of the Peace River's hydrology and, she hopes, produce information that can be used to improve the management of this important wetland, which forms part of Wood Buffalo National Park.

Maria-Lucia Castillo

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PHOTO: STUDENTS ON ICE

The head of geography and history at Mayfield Secondary School in Caledon, Ont., northwest of Toronto, VanZant has also organized class trips to Italy and Costa Rica. Paraphrasing American geographer Carl O. Sauer, he says, "It's wonderful to see children experiencing geography through the soles of their feet."

Outside the classroom, his involvement in the Ontario Association for Geographic and Environmental Education has helped shape the provincial curriculum. He also recently co-authored a textbook that promotes hands-on learning. It is for these reasons, among others, that VanZant is receiving the Canadian Council for Geographic Education's 2006 Geographic Literacy Award.

During almost two decades of teaching, he has helped his students understand and appreciate the world around them and the place they have in it. "Canada is such a remarkably diverse country," he says, "and a lot of us don't get to see it."

Maria-Lucia Castillo

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In September 2003, Findlay MacDermid was a third-year environmental science and geography student at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont., on the verge of abandoning his studies.

He wasn't daunted by the 475,000 hectares of rugged terrain in northwest Ontario's Quetico Provincial Park, where he hoped to spend months completing his undergraduate thesis on prairie tall grasses. Rather, what made MacDermid consider dropping out was the lack of funding for his research.

"He was ready to quit," says Will Wilson, his geography professor.

The grant he received nearly six months later from The Royal Canadian Geographical Society, says MacDermid, made all the difference. "I had no other funding to do this research, and without the RCGS grant, I wouldn't have done it."

He spent the following summer paddling through Quetico probing soil conditions, examining historic logging sites and collecting prairie grass samples. "That's the great thing about the grant program," says Wilson, "it offers students the chance to get out and do geography."

MacDermid graduated in 2005 and now lives in Calgary. In August, he returned from a four-month trip on behalf of the Nature Conservancy of Canada compiling an inventory of natural resources and mapping invasive species in Waterton Lakes National Park, on Alberta's southern border.

Melanie Bidiuk

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