In the summer of 2023, West Hansen led a team of kayakers, known as The Arctic Cowboys, through the Northwest Passage, making history as the first people to cross it by human power. The journey took them 103 days to complete, during which they encountered polar bears, icebergs, and some of the most intense weather of their lives.
In the summer of 2023, West Hansen led a team of kayakers, known as The Arctic Cowboys, through the Northwest Passage, making history as the first people to cross it by human power. The journey took them 103 days to complete, during which they encountered polar bears, icebergs, and some of the most intense weather of their lives.
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West Hansen:
The icebergs were beautiful. They're much better up close than they are in pictures. They're multicolored. They're not just white. They're different shades of blue, purple. There's some yellow sometimes. It was like an art museum, a very wonderful art museum. And they're otherworldly. They're so large. I mean, these are the size of buildings. Sometimes the size of small towns.
Shelby Stanger:
In the summer of 2023, West Hansen led a team of kayakers through the Northwest Passage. This waterway is the northernmost channel between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and it remained frozen for thousands of years, preventing any crossings until recently. West and his group called the Arctic Cowboys made history that summer as the first people to cross the Passage by human power. It took them 103 days to complete the Passage, and along the way, they encountered polar bears, icebergs and some of the most intense weather of their lives. I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production, presented by Capital One and the REI Co-op MasterCard.
West Hansen, the expedition leader of the Arctic Cowboys, grew up in Texas and now lives outside of Austin. He's quite a character, although you might not realize it at first. He's a humble social worker who loves to read, but at the same time, West is also an impressive athlete and explorer. He started kayaking in college, and he spent 25 years paddling in both speed and endurance competitions. He hadn't gone on any kayaking expeditions until he was in his 50s. Now at age 62, West has kayaked the longest rivers in the world. His first expedition was in 2012, when he paddled the entire length of the Amazon.
West Hansen, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. You have lived some of the wildest ideas out there. Excited to have you on.
West Hansen:
Well, thanks, Shelby. I love being here. I'm a real big fan of the show.
Shelby Stanger:
I want to start by going back. How did you decide to do your first kayaking expedition down the Amazon in 2012?
West Hansen:
A few years before, about four years before then I was invited to do this raft race. I'd been in an ultra-marathon canoe and kayak racer for about 25 years before then, and I've got a talent for that. I mean, there's a nature and nurture type of thing that's allowed me to sit in a boat for a long period of time without stopping. And you don't have to be really fast to be an ultra-marathon canoe racer, you just have to be very consistent. And so I've had some successes in that area. And then when we went down to the race on the Amazon, we went to Iquitos and raced this 88 mile race, and I was just enamored with the Amazon.
I thought, well, this is wonderful. This is the largest moving thing I've ever seen in my life, and I've seen super tankers and clouds, and the Amazon is just this huge mass of water. And I just really became enamored with it. And then a friend of mine on the way home lent me Joe Kane's book, Running the Amazon. And I read that during a layover in Phoenix while drinking heavily. And I kind of landed in Austin and realized, well, I can do this. I mean, this is just paddling a long ways and I'm really good at paddling. So at that point, I decided to paddle the entire Amazon River.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay. This is amazing. So I love that you're inebriated in the airport and you read this book and you were like, oh yeah, this is my wild idea. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes wild ideas happen on layovers after reading a book and the idea comes to you. But back up, you were a kayaker. So how did you get into kayaking while living in Texas?
West Hansen:
Well, there's not a lot of water here, especially now, we've been droughting and that's a really good question. In college, back in the early '80s, I was attending school at Southwest Texas State University, home of the Bobcats to the Mighty Bobcat Band. And I took a kayaking course. The Guadalupe River is nearby, and the Guadalupe actually used to have water in it before the succession of droughts hit for the past couple of decades. And I learned basic whitewater skills. And for about 10 years, I did a lot of whitewater until, as you can imagine, the water kind of started drying up. And I saw these guys out racing in these ultrafast carbon fiber racing canoes and kayaks.
And I thought, oh, well, let me give that a shot. And did that for, like I said, about 20 years before going to Peru. And there's a series, several series across the United States, these ultra-marathon races, those are over a hundred miles. And in Texas we have the 260-mile Texas water safari, which starts in San Marcos and ends on the Gulf of Mexico. And it's nonstop. You go several days without sleeping and you just keep moving. So I got really good at that, and that led straight into the expedition canoeing and kayaking because you used the same mentality, you eat the same foods and you go without stopping.
Shelby Stanger:
So it was this one outdoor education course that planted a seed, and you liked it.
West Hansen:
It was a PE course in college, yeah, and I really liked it. I'm not sure what drew me to it. I mean, I've never really canoed growing up. It seemed kind of neat. And to tell you the truth, I'm not enamored with canoeing and kayaking. I know that sounds strange because I've made an expedition career out of it, but I see it more as a means to get where I want to be, where no one else is. I've taken this skill that I'm inadvertently good at and let it take me to where I want to go.
Shelby Stanger:
What makes you a good paddler?
West Hansen:
I don't know, because I don't know what makes someone a bad paddler. I can sit for a long, long, long, long time and move my arms in a forceful way and propel myself. And I don't get bored by it, which is strange because my attention span is that of a gnat. But I can sit for days on it and paddle and not be bored and just kind of get into it.
Shelby Stanger:
Well, I think if you're paddling in an area that is fascinating and captivating your attention and it demands so much focus like the water is constantly changing, when you're moving on it. And everything underneath you is changing and everything around you is changing and above you is changing. I mean, you have to be in almost a meditative state when you're paddling.
West Hansen:
The last thing I think of usually when I'm paddling is paddling. I'm thinking of songs when I'm either bored or stressed out while I'm paddling for 10 hours a day, I'll build a house because I was a home builder also for part of my career. And I'll start this perfect house that we all have in our minds, and I'll start it from the ground up and building the foundation and go up. So it's rare that I think about paddling when I'm out paddling.
Shelby Stanger:
After competing in kayak races for over two decades, West became interested in going on an expedition. In 2012, a well-known kayaker found a new source of the Amazon River, which extended it by roughly 90 miles surpassing the length of the Nile River. West wanted to be the first kayaker to paddle the entire river from this new source. I've mentioned this before, but back in 2011, I actually stand up paddled a small portion of the Amazon River, maybe 50 miles of it, but the entire river is 4,200 miles long and runs from the Peruvian Andes all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. How did this expedition come together? Who was there?
West Hansen:
Well, I didn't know anything about running an expedition, so I grabbed as many people as I could. And we had a mentor, Piotr Chmielinski, and he had kayaked or paddled the Amazon from the old source. He was the first one to do that, running an expedition back in the mid 1980s. So we decided, okay, we're going to be the first expedition from this new source. And once again, not knowing anything about how to run an expedition, I threw the kitchen sink at it. We took way too much gear. We had way too many people. And I knew that at the time, I didn't know what I was doing, and I knew I was probably doing too much, but I'd rather do that than not enough. And so I got these whitewater experts to help make sure I lived through the first 500 miles, which is uncharted whitewater through the Andes. And then once we got down to the flat water, I switched teams to these ultra-marathon canoe and kayak racers I knew from Texas.
By the end of the trip, we dwindled down to just three of us, and we started with 17, which included a really large bank crew. So I just threw everything I could at it, and I recommend that for anybody. If you're starting out an expedition, learn from the people who came before you. Don't doubt what they say, even if you think you know better.
Shelby Stanger:
How many days did it take you to do the whole Amazon?
West Hansen:
111 days from start to finish.
Shelby Stanger:
Was there any moment that just was like awe-inspiring? I know for me, there was a time where we paddled into a Clay Lick and all of a sudden these macaws went flying, these wild parrots and it was just like, you couldn't make this up. It was so stunning.
West Hansen:
Well, every moment on the Amazon was stunning from the howler monkeys, which made this macabre sound that traveled from miles.
Shelby Stanger:
[monkey sound].
West Hansen:
Yes. They were very loud and very fascinating. Sounded like wind a lot of times. But probably outside of the whitewater, which was scary, the most jarring incident was right at the end, after we had paddled 111 days, and we were facing the Atlantic Ocean, which was about 70 miles west of the city of Belém. So we're out there past Belém, heading towards the Atlantic Ocean to where the Amazon officially ended, which is out in the middle of nowhere because it's all mangrove swamps. There's no cities, no lights, there's nothing. And we had been paddling for 27 hours non-stop. There's really nowhere to land. And we came upon this sand island. And so we thought we'd get some sleep and then we'll paddle the remaining 12 miles out to the ocean and turn around and come back.
And we camped on this island and after two hours we were woken up because the tide came in from the Atlantic and rose 12 feet. And we had to pack the tents real quickly, shove in the kayaks, but now it's 10 o'clock at night, we can't see anything. And we thought, well, let's just go ahead and paddle this final 12 miles and get this over. It's out here in the middle of nowhere. Well, the tide wouldn't finish coming in. So for six hours, the two kayaks that we were in, I was on a solo and my buddies were on a tandem paddled against the Atlantic Ocean as it met the Amazon. Now the Amazon is 90 miles wide there, and so the force of the largest river on earth was meeting the Atlantic Ocean, and it was generating these massive waves that we had to paddle straight into, and they just kept getting bigger and bigger the further we got out into the water.
And then I'm watching the GPS at this time just to see when we turn over or we can turn around, and the waves are getting to be 30 feet tall. And we were so afraid that they're going to break now. The only way we could see them at night, how tall they were was been the stars blacked out. And you could see this mountain rolling towards us, this mountain of darkness where the stars weren't any longer on the horizon. And we'd have to rush up and paddle up to the top of these 30 foot swells, these very steep swells, and then race down the other side and would bury the bowels of our kayak. And we'd pop up and rush up the next one before they rolled on top of us. And it was, yeah, it was a sphincter tightener, that's for sure. And so about three in the morning, we finally hit the point of where it was all Atlantic and no longer the Amazon, we'd passed the mouth.
And so we paddled another couple of hundred yards, then I called it, and we turned around and raced for the nearest shore, which was about five miles away. And that had to be one of the scariest things I'd ever done. So that was an exciting moment.
Shelby Stanger:
After the Amazon, West got the itch to go on another expedition. Months of research led him to the Volga River in Russia. The Volga River is the longest river in Europe. It starts in the Valdai Hills northwest of Moscow and flows 2000 miles into the Caspian Sea. Two years after his Amazon paddle, West set out for Russia. How soon after you did the Amazon did you decide to kayak the longest river in Russia, which is the Volga River, 2100 miles?
West Hansen:
Well, I knew I was going to do something right after the Amazon. I wasn't sure what. And then started looking around and thought, well, what other rivers haven't been accomplished source to see. And just started looking around and the Volga hadn't been kayaked yet, and I thought, all right, let's go do it. And we kind of snuck in and did that one because Putin had just invaded Crimea, and President Obama was really good at standing up to him. So we weren't really popular. Americans weren't really popular at the time, so we literally snuck in to do the entire Volga River.
Shelby Stanger:
And how did you sneak in? That is also another story?
West Hansen:
It was kind of over the top. We made some friends there and we said, "Hey, can you pick us up from the airport?" And they said, sure. And we booked a non-stop flight from Houston Intercontinental Airport to Moscow, and we showed up with our kayaks. 18 foot kayaks and all our gear, and we checked them as oversized luggage, if you can believe it. It cost us 150 extra dollars to fly non-stop. It was the weirdest thing. And we got off the airplane in Moscow with our kayaks, dragging them through the airport and went to security, and we had to feed them through the x-ray machine. And no one better than I am, we had giant hunting knives with us and all this food and all this gear. And they stamped our passport, "Welcome to Russia" and we said, "Thanks, Dasvidanya." And we got out of there, and that was it. It was the most surreal thing you can imagine. And then we had someone drive us to the headwaters of the Volga the next day, and we started paddling.
Shelby Stanger:
And no one bothered you the whole time?
West Hansen:
Oh, no. We got bothered quite a bit. We were only held at gunpoint one time, but the dams along the way, you're forbidden to be on them. And so we'd paddle up to the dams and we'd try to scurry over the top of them and get down below them real quickly. And a couple of times there'd be someone on a loudspeaker yelling us in Russian to get off the dam. And of course we did, "[inaudible 00:15:08], we don't speak Russian, sorry." But they didn't have any way to chase us. They didn't have a car, they didn't have boats or anything, so we just kind of kept going. But no one wanted to mess with us. They knew as soon as they found out we were Americans, they thought, oh, the paperwork for this thing is going to be a nightmare. So they just said, "Get, get, get out of here. Just keep going."
Shelby Stanger:
Was there anything that stuck out about the nature of the Volga River?
West Hansen:
The people were so friendly. And we haven't been able to correspond with them since the Ukrainian war, but the people were just wonderful. The food was great. We were treated with such warm hospitality. We'd be invited into people's homes and be forced to eat everything in the house, if we could still breathe and drink all of their whiskey. It was just amazing.
Shelby Stanger:
Russia is sparsely populated, and as much as West loved meeting the locals, he was also impressed by the beautiful nature he saw. He paddled through stunning forests and deserts finishing the journey in the Caspian Sea between Europe and Asia. It was a trip of a lifetime, and it was clear to West afterwards that his career as an expedition leader was far from over.
Once West Hansen started kayaking in some of the most remote parts of the world, he couldn't get enough. In 2021, West decided it was time to go after his next wild idea, and started researching the Northwest Passage in the Arctic. The Northwest Passage is a body of water between mainland North America and the North Pole. For as long as humans have been around, the Northwest Passage has been frozen over, making it impassable. Over the last couple of decades, however, climate change has caused it to thaw, opening up the waterways. Still conditions are unpredictable. And up until 2023, no one had successfully paddled it. West knew with preparation, skill and the right mindset, kayaking through the Northwest Passage was a challenging but attainable goal. So how did you get the idea to kayak the Northwest Passage?
West Hansen:
Well, my daughter graduated from college, and so I thought, okay, and she's kind of launched on her own. She's working on her doctorate, and this is about four ago. So I thought, what's next? And so I looked around to see what hadn't been done, and then I noticed several folks had tried to kayak or row the Northwest Passage. And so I started doing my research into that and talking to these people, did all the research I could to find out what's going on and what happened that they didn't succeed. And so I integrated that in my plan. And we went up in 2022 on a three-person team in solo kayaks, and we only made it about 260 miles and we didn't succeed. But when we went up there, we met people who were later to become our friends, who were part of the Inuit communities, and we learned so much. So we came back the next year, which was in 2023 with different kayaks and with a different mindset, and that's when we were able to succeed.
Shelby Stanger:
West doesn't consider his team's 2022 attempt a failure. In fact, it laid the groundwork for a successful crossing the following year. On that first try, West learned that instead of traveling by individual kayaks, the team needed to have double kayaks, which were bigger and had more space to carry supplies. Because the weather would also play a bigger role than it had on previous expeditions, West would need to account for extra time and resources. It was inevitable that storms and ice would hold them back from time to time. Luckily in his first attempt at the Passage, West met some local Inuit people who shared their knowledge with him. They taught him about wind, weather patterns and even polar bears. Over the next year, West assembled a team of three other paddlers, his friend and previous expedition partner Jeff Wueste and endurance kayakers, Mark Agnew and Eileen Visser. They called themselves the Arctic Cowboys.
What did you guys have to prepare for specifically, what dangers did you have to prepare for before you set off?
West Hansen:
Well, right off the bat, everybody thinks of polar bears because that's where they live, that's their home. And so before we went up there in 2022, fortunately on the internet, Facebook in particular, we found a lot of polar bear experts in Texas. You would be surprised at how many people are experts on polar bears in Texas. But once we got up there, we learned it was a lot different than our Texas experts wanted to tell us. It turns out they weren't as big a problem as we thought. We were well armed, we got gun permits to carry, and they strongly urge you to do so because polar bears do kill and eat people. But we never had to shoot any polar bears, fortunately because they were able to be scared off. And we had these sensors, movement sensors around our tent when we'd sleep at night and it would go off if anything walked near us. And they worked great.
So polar bears were more curious, and they really weren't that big of a problem. Ice was an issue. So this ice that drifts through can crush you. It moves very fast. It can block your way and no matter of minutes, pin you in. It kept us on shore for weeks at a time when we were first starting out. And you don't want to get near an iceberg because it could roll over on you at any given minute.
Shelby Stanger:
Can you talk to me about what sort of planning and prep goes on before you even leave?
West Hansen:
You try to gain weight, and I recommend that to anybody going on expedition, eat a lot of junk food because as I mentioned, it's hard to carry fat with you. Fat is a very heavy part of your nutrition, that's hard to pack into a kayak. So we didn't have hardly any fat with us. We took nuts and trail mix and things like that, but it's just not enough. And we were out there for 105 days or so with only one resupply point. And so I lost about 30 pounds, but you just got to try to gain as much weight as you can. We don't really work out to prepare for this. You just get out there and if you know how to paddle, then you just keep paddling and you get in shape along the way.
Shelby Stanger:
What kind of gear did you need to have though?
West Hansen:
Well, for paddling, we need dry suits and they make these dry suits and we wear an underlayment underneath it that keeps us warm while we're moving and keeps us fairly dry. And the warmth comes from the dryness. So they have tight gussets around your wrists and your neck, and they're full body, and you zip yourself into them. So you stay fairly dry. And if you don't stay that dry, you still stay somewhat warm. Then off the water, it'd be just general gear that you would think to stay warm. And some days we're warm enough up there that we're in T-shirts and shorts on the land, when we first started out in the summer.
Shelby Stanger:
And then you guys ran into a lot of polar bears?
West Hansen:
Yeah, so during the first half, there's polar bear sightings almost daily. They would wander into our camp a lot. They didn't want to be around us. They were much smarter than we were. They were just curious. They would smell us for miles away and want to come see if there's something to eat. A lot of bear cubs, they really are adorable. I mean, and they want to walk up to us, the bear cubs, hey, let's go play. Let's hug. And mama bear luckily would say, no, no, stay away from the riff-raff. And so she had to teach them to be afraid of us. But that was the biggest fear was getting between a cub and a mom. It's like, oh man, this would be a lose-lose situation. But we weren't threatened by polar bears on the water. Lots and lots of polar bears on the ice floes, on land. They're around us constantly.
Shelby Stanger:
Could you take us through a typical day like sun, well, I guess it wasn't sun up, start like waking up to going to bed? What happens?
West Hansen:
Well, I'm glad you brought that up. A typical day, and this is how I think we've been really successful on all of our expeditions, is we develop a routine and we stick to it as close as we can. The alarm goes off, we have to set the alarm just to have a routine.
Shelby Stanger:
What time?
West Hansen:
It all depends. If there's daylight, if we have night and day, then we have the alarm two hours before the sun comes up. Otherwise, it's just somewhat arbitrary. We try to stick to a normal day night pattern, even when there's 24 hours of daylight. So two hours before we want to get on the water, the alarm goes off, we get up, we make oatmeal, coffee, whatever, two cups of coffee always, because the world isn't going to move until half my coffee. And then we slowly get dressed and we start packing everything. And the goal is two hours after we wake up to be on the water. Now, before we get on the water, we had basically a thermos and we would put in some hot ramen, and that's what we'd drink throughout the day, along with our bottle of water and a bottle of protein mix.
And so we'd have all that ready when we took off, and then we'd take off and just start paddling. We'd have our course laid out. We only stopped for a few minutes at a time throughout the entire day. We always were moving, CFM, constant forward motion, CFM. Wasn't at a fast pace, but it was consistent. And so then towards the end of the day, after 10 or 12 hours, we'd say, okay, let's look at this camp spot up here. Then we'd pull in, wrench ourselves from our kayaks because we've been sitting there for 10 or 12 hours, and so we're pretty stiff. And we drag the kayaks up, which were very heavy, and then we'd unload and set up the tent. And as Jeff and I set up the tent, then Mark, the young guy, he'd take all our water bladders and go hunt for fresh drinking water somewhere. Water was always a problem, finding fresh water. So that was a very important thing that Mark took upon himself to do, and we really appreciate it, because we're constantly dehydrated up there.
Shelby Stanger:
What'd you do if you didn't have water? Did you melt snow?
West Hansen:
No. It never got to that. It came close to that at the end because the water sources that Mark found were frozen, so he'd have to take the hatchet and break through them, but he was always able to find water. But otherwise, we were able to find fresh water using these melt ponds up in the hills or the mountains somewhere. Unfortunately, they're usually surrounded by goose poo because there are a lot of geese. And luckily we had filters with us, but we never used them because the Inuit said, Giardia doesn't happen up here. We drank what they drank, and we were all fine. We kept waiting to get sick, but we never did. And then we'd set up the tent and we'd get in there and cook supper and get out the charts and we'd map out the next day, and play crossword puzzles sometimes if we had time, but usually we're too tired. I would journal every night because if I didn't take notes that day, then I would probably forget it. But you got to remember when it was dark, we were asleep because we were so worn out.
Shelby Stanger:
For the first several weeks, the team had close to 24 hours of daylight, which made for some awe-inspiring moments.
West Hansen:
We were making this, it was a 45-mile open ocean crossing from one peninsula to the other. Ice floes were coming through there, the weather can come in quickly. So we had to wait three days before these optimal conditions. And so we got out there in the middle and it was pristine. It was lake-like. There were no waves. It was smooth. We saw whales, we saw seals, were so playful that would come up. They were so curious and jump around us, and it was absolutely gorgeous. But then at one point, right when we came up to our first ice floe that we had to get through near the other side, we had the sun that was low on the horizon in the west. And then to the east, when we turned around and looked the mountain range behind us, the full moon was sitting in the exact same position, equal and opposite as just as large. And it was absolutely amazing because here we were at this rare moment in this equinox situation where we could see both.
It was full daylight because the sun and the moon didn't set. They rotated in this sphere around us, and it was just awe, it was just magical, and we all stopped and took it in. It was quite amazing.
Shelby Stanger:
The second half of the journey, however, got a little more dicey. It was colder, darker, there was more ice, and the weather was tougher to navigate. They ran low on food, and drinking water was scarce. It made for a harrowing last few days.
You all finished. And I'm curious what that was like.
West Hansen:
Well, that was amazing, and I feel very proud of that, because everybody's safety weighed on me heavily. That was the most stressful part of this expedition because we were in some very tense situation with some huge breaking waves that were sub-freezing in blizzards at times. And I was so concerned about our teammates. It wore very heavily on me. So when we finished, it crossed into the Beaufort Sea, but we still weren't near civilization. We still had several days to go and the weather was getting worse. We had a kayak to this desolate island called Nicholson Island, where this old airstrip was, the old gravel airstrip that we didn't even know what shape it was in, that a bush plane was going to pick us up. And they didn't know if they could land. And winter was just coming down on us hard. So yes, we finished, but then we had to get out of there, and that was even more stressful.
Shelby Stanger:
So how did you get to the end? What kept you going, I guess this whole time?
West Hansen:
Well, there's no option. I mean, seriously, what are you going to do? There's nowhere to pull over. No one was going to come get you. I mean, my sister Barbara is our expedition manager. She's been our expedition manager for all of our expeditions. So she's back home doing all the logistics, and she called all these boat owners in the area to see if they can come out and get us, once we finished and no one said, "No, it's too late in the season, the seas too rough." And then there were some barges that ply the area for commerce, and they all shut down for the season, because she had arranged for a barge to pick us up out there in the Beaufort Sea, and they said, "No, we're not going out there anymore." And there's this one bush pilot, who said, "Well, if they can get to this island here and we get a weather window, I'll come get them." And we just happened to hit the weather window just right because there were storms in back of us and storms in front of us.
Shelby Stanger:
What was it like when he landed and you saw his plane actually touch down?
West Hansen:
It was kind of scary, because we had been there for overnight. We got to the island and we radioed that we were there, come get us. And they said, "What does the runway look like?" What are we going to tell them? It looks bad? No, it looks great. It looks wonderful. Come get us. It could have had logs across it, we would've told them to come get us. And he came, but he made about 10 passes at about 20 or 30 feet above the terrain to make sure it was clear. And we thought, he's not going to land. He's going to take off. And he let us know if he gets there and it looks bad, I'm just turning around and going home. So it was very tense waiting until he touched ground. And once he touched ground, we had to cut the last four feet of our kayaks to fit inside the bush plane. And once we got those loaded and took off, I was able to relax.
Shelby Stanger:
You cut the kayak? I'm surprised you even took it home.
West Hansen:
Yeah, I got it here, and I'm going to put them back together.
Shelby Stanger:
On October 8th, 2023, after 103 days, the Arctic Cowboys completed their kayak expedition of the Northwest Passage. There have been over 20 documented attempts to paddle the Passage, but to date the Arctic Cowboys are the only team to successfully complete the journey. If you want to learn more about the Arctic Cowboys, you can find them on their website at thearcticcowboys.com and on Instagram at thearcticcowboys. West has another expedition coming up next summer. He plans to paddle the Northwest Passage again. This time going in the opposite direction. To learn more about that, you can find him online at westhansen.com. That's W-E-S-T-H-A-N-S-E-N.com. We hear he might be looking for folks to join his next expedition, so feel free to reach out if you're interested.
Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Peers Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. Our senior producers are Jenny Barber and Hannah Boyd. Our executive producers are Paolo Motila and Joe Crosby. As always, we love it when you follow the show, take time to rate it, and write a review wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.