The 18 Most Adventurous People in the World Right Now

3. JUSTIN FORNAL, Cultural Explorer

Justin Fornal is good at a lot of things. But describing what he does for a living is not one of them—on any given expedition, he’s a cultural detective, extreme athlete, a culinary explorer, or, most impressively, all of the above. But above all else, the Bronx dweller is a seeker in search of the weird and wild, of the truth, and of his own personal limits. Fornal has traveled 1,200 miles deep into the East African bush to learn more about the Buganda tribe; he swam 100 miles around a Scottish island to create one of the rarest whiskies in the world.

“All my stories are obsessions,” he says. “And when I can combine athleticism with cultural research in the field to create something, that’s what makes it all worth it for me.”

Perhaps Fornal’s legacy will be as a pioneer in journalism, a sort of Hunter Thompson of the Vice era. Indeed, his explorations carry as much weight and danger as any war reporter’s. Later this year, he heads to Iraq to work with religious minorities; after that, he heads to Afghanistan to gather a rare rock from the oldest mine and deliver it to artists in New York. He’s also planning to swim 230 miles from Mopti to Timbuktu to build a clinic and raise awareness in the fight against female genital mutilation. “At the heart of all my field research is giving people a microphone,” he says. “I want to get the stories out there while the stories can still be recorded.”

4. IAN WALSH, Big Wave Surfer

Say what you will about surfers, there’s nothing laid back about Ian Walsh’s approach to riding waves. It makes sense given the fact that he is one of the few humans on the planet chasing the biggest storms around the world and regularly charging into 50-foot barrels. Walsh is leading a new breed if big wave surfer that understands that being truly prepared to take on record-breaking swell when it arrives is the future of the sport. “My training is entirely connected to what happens in the water,” he explains. “The time I put in at the gym, on the bike, the torturous hours doing breath-hold exercises—I’m putting myself in a position to ride a wave I’ve been visualizing.”

Walsh surfed Jaws for the first time at age 16. Three years later, he was runner-up in the Billabong XXL awards for riding a 68-footer at the same break. Since then, Walsh has placed in the top three of so many Big Wave events that he is on his way to cementing his spot alongside Shane Dorian and Greg Noll as one of the all-time greats. But the thing he learned right from an early age is that truly giant surf is rare—often occurring less a few times a year—and every wave deserves absolute focus. Thus, Walsh is basically changing surfing every single time he paddles out or gets towed into a wall of water. “On each big day, the level of our sport progresses—the types of lines people are riding, the equipment…” he told Men’s Journal. “The stakes are very high and, while you can’t control everything, you can control how ready you are.”

5. FELICITY ASTON, Polar Explorer

British Polar explorer Felicity Aston thinks everyone needs to really freeze their asses off at least once in their life. As one of the most experienced and accomplished living Polar explorers, her career has long been driven by curiosity and conservation. But these days, she’s using her skills to shatter some long-standing barriers by exposing more people to the Polar regions. “I wish I could take everybody to these places,” she says. “When you experience them for yourself, then you care about them.” Specifically, Aston has chosen to invite expedition members that challenge the idea of what an explorer looks like, specializing in all-female expeditions; she recently led a team of European and Middle Eastern women to the North Pole.

Aston began her career as a meteorologist stationed in Antarctica but decided it was time to step out of her comfort zone in 2006 when she joined the first all-female British expedition across the Greenland ice sheet. Six years and several polar trips later, Aston became the first person ever to ski alone across Antarctica, under their own steam (which earned her prestigious MBE status from the British government). It doesn’t seem swanky awards are slowing her down. “Three weeks ago, the helicopter dropped us off on the ice and it was -38C,” she told us after returning from the North Pole. By the end of that day, I had a girl with such severe frostbite she had to leave the expedition.” 

6. RUE MAPP, Activist

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Rue Mapp (above, center) believes the outdoors is a place where we can leave the burdens of societal dysfunction behind. Through Outdoor Afro, a nationwide network of black enthusiasts, she’s helping adventurers of color connect in what’s perceived as an overwhelmingly white dominion.

“I was going to the traditional outdoor clubs and groups, reading outdoor magazines, and I wasn’t seeing myself,” she told Men’s Journal. “I was tired of being the only one—the only black person on a ride, on a hike—so we put the word out. We started hearing from the other ‘only ones’, and then put all the only ones together and became a community.”

Since founding the community in 2009, Mapp has been to the White House, was named one of the most influential African Americans in the country by The Root, and received the Outdoor Industry Inspiration Award. But Mapp’s work has never been more important than right now—she says the outdoors is much more than an exciting escape; it’s a rare safe-haven at a time of heightened insecurity. “After Ferguson, we started doing healing hikes—we took it to nature,” she says. “The trees don’t know you’re black. The birds don’t know how much money you have in your bank account.”

7. STEVE AND CHRIS BOYES, Conservationists

South African conservationists Steve and Chris Boyes (in the foreground) may have different skill sets, but they certainly have a very singular vision: uncover the striking beauty of totally untouched landscapes—no matter what the danger—in order to save them. And in places like Botswana, Rwanda, and Zambia, a simple walk in the woods can be deadly. “If you don’t experience the heart of a place, you can’t represent it honestly and raise millions of dollars for it—we have to know the soul of it,” says Dr. Steve Boyes, 39, who spends a lot of his time lobbying in Washington or Europe, raising money, and raising awareness. “We need to be able to tell a government official we’ve seen every inch of a river, so we risk our lives for that once-in-a-lifetime benefit.” Steve’s brother Chris, who is two years younger, is largely in charge of expedition logistics, spending up to nine months of every year out in the field.

Known early on as “The Bush Boyes” through their work with National Geographic, and the Wild Bird Trust, the two just premiered their documentary Into the Okavango at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival. It’s their most important work to date, in their effort to gather stunning film footage as a way of recording a place exactly as it exists at that moment in time, for generations to come. It also highlights the dangers of their work.

“In the film, a hippo capsizes my boat,” says Steve. “But that happens once a week. Crocodiles also bump us or jump over the boat. On the river you have to be absolutely focused—every hump or ripple in the water, every eddy, every movement, every sound. If you drop that focus, you get in trouble.”

8. KIT DESLAURIERS, Ski Mountaineer

You know someone is passionate about skiing when they ascend mountains that even climbers are scared of just for the downhill. Kit DesLauriers has made a career of making fresh tracks in some of the most technical and dangerous peaks in the world. Skiing has always been in DesLauriers’ blood, as she did longs stints as a ski bum in the Alps and Rockies, eventually winning back-to-back World Freeskiing Championships in 2004 and 2005. She also racked up notable descents off Mt. Aspiring in New Zealand and The Grand Teton in Wyoming. But she became the official queen of first descents when she became the first person ever to ski the Seven Summits, the highest peak on each continent, in 2006. 

Since then, her love of skiing remote and technical lines has evolved into a sort of extreme eco-activism. DesLauriers has just set off on her third expedition to the Arctic Refuge in Alaska, where she has her eyes on skiing the second highest peak in the Brook’s Range (she has already skied the first, third, fourth, and fifth highest peaks—and all have been first descents). But at age 49, it’s clear her priorities have shifted, slightly.

“Yeah, there will be a few ski descents,” she told Men’s Journal before she left. “But these are adventures where I’m able to incorporate my skills into the effort to protect sacred lands.” Meanwhile, DesLauriers points to a new set concerns, such as the remoteness and polar bears, that come with the new style of adventure. Part of her prep for her upcoming trip was handgun training.

One thing is clear, no matter what DesLauriers does, it will always involve skis and a little downhill. “I learned early on that when I don’t have my skis, it just feels like something’s missing,” she says.

9. TASHI AND NUNGSHI MALIK, Everest Summiteers and Activists

Mountaineering has long been a surprisingly democratic pursuit, in which the old routinely outperform the young and women are often stronger than men. For Indian twins Tashi and Nungshi Malik, mountaineering felt like the perfect way to highlight gender inequality in their home country; they became the first twins to summit Everest in 2013, at the age of 21. And that was just the beginning of their incredible journey—one year later they had climbed all of the Seven Summits, and a year after that, they had skied to both the North and South Pole, becoming the youngest people ever to achieve what’s known as the “Explorers Grand Slam” at just 24. 

The Malik’s adventure accomplishments are undeniable. But it’s what drove them to achieve so much at such a young age—and the societal oppression they had to overcome—that makes them remarkable. Having grown up in a society in which nearly all sports are off-limits to girls, their dreams seemed impossible and it was their father, of all people, who pushed them to ignore gender and pursue their passion. They’re already planning their next adventure: they have their eyes on the world’s four largest ice caps.”

“[India’s girls] have numerous ‘Mountains to climb’ to merely survive,” Nungshi once said. “We’ve resolved to stand solidly with them and pledge all our resources to help them earn their rightful and equal place in society.”

10. VINCENT COLLIARD, Polar Explorer

The word commitment gets thrown around a lot in adventure. French Polar explorer Vincent Colliard is setting a new bar with his aim to ski the 20 largest ice caps over the next 10 years. After some impressive expeditions and first ascents in cold and remote places such as the Himalaya and Patagonia, the mountain guide from the Basque country met accomplished Norwegian Polar explorer Børge Ousland. After sailing the Northwest Passage together, they launched Project Ice Legacy in 2014 and have already ticked off five ice caps on the list, including the three biggest, which are all in Alaska.

Awareness, of course, is at the heart of Colliard’s mission, as he sees the ice caps as our most fragile and vulnerable ecosystems. As such, he’s teamed up with the scientific community in collecting data from the field that will help us chart how fast the ice is disappearing. One thing is for sure, no one on this planet will know the ice caps quite like Colliard by 2024.

11. JEREMY JONES, Snowboarder

A few years ago, Jeremy Jones pulled off an incredible trick: the mountains he was climbing were so technical, and his impossible lines down so mind-blowing, that people were forgetting what was under his feet, as skiers and snowboarders alike were simply in awe of how he was pushing extreme snow sports of any kind to a new level.

Jones famously gave up helicopters many years ago, saying ‘they just complicate things’, and made the film Deeper, the first snowboard flick featuring only non machine-assisted ascents. In 2013 Jones rode a 3,600-foot spine, off of an unclimbed, unnamed peak in the Alaska Range and made the first descent of a 60-degree spine off of 21,000-foot Shangri La in the Nepalese Himalaya, for the film Higher.

Jones is also somewhat of a pioneer for his preferred mode of transport in the mountains: a splitboard, which is a snowboard that splits in half to become skis for the ascent and then becomes a snowboard again for the descent. Perhaps even more important is his conservation work—in 2007 he founded Protect Our Winters, a non-profit dedicated to raising awareness about the effect of climate change on snowpack.

Despite Jones’ push toward bigger and bigger peaks to bomb down, higher does not equal better. “If I see a line that really inspires me, I’m a little bummed if I find out that line is at 20,000 feet,” he admits. “As much as I like the hiking, it’s still about the ride down.

12. MELISSA ARNOT, Mountain Guide, Everest Record Holder

Melissa Arnot is famous throughout the adventure world for having been to the summit of Everest six times, more than any other western woman. But her true legacy lies in the number of times she’s been to the summit of the much more modest Mt Rainier in Washington state. As one of the hardest working mountain guides in the world, Arnot has ascended Rainier over 90 times, delivering newbies of all ages to the summit. 

“My greatest passion is with guiding,” she says. “First ascents are fun, but I only do harder personal trips so I can empathize with clients better. I like watching people become better people in the mountains.” 

That’s not to say Arnot’s Everest climbs are a mere afterthought. She not only summited for the first time at just 24 years old, but on her last Everest climb in 2016, she became the first American woman to climb the mountain without supplemental oxygen. The mountain holds a particularly special place in Arnot’s heart, as she believes that western guides and climbers have an important opportunity to become better stewards in the region. Back in 2012, she co-founded the Juniper Fund, which provides life insurance and job training for Sherpa people whose family members have died or gotten injured while working on the mountain.

“Nepal is so important to me,” she says. “The guiding industry on Everest is relatively young and we can shape it. You see a lot of really negative articles about Everest climbs these days and it’s not quite like that—but it’s still not as good as it could be.”

13. CRISTINA MITTERMEIER AND PAUL NICKLEN, Ocean Conservationists

Talk about a power couple: Cristina Mittermeier and Paul Nicklen were two of the most influential wildlife conservation photographers in the world before they even met each other. Mittermeier is a one-time Smithsonian Photographer of the year and founded the International League of Conservation Photographers; Nicklen is a multi-award winning 20-year vet National Geographic photographer. Now married, they have a combined 5 million followers on Instagram and their images have come to define a movement. As trained marine biologists, photographers, and storytellers, Mittermeier, 51, and Nicklen, 49, have a shared conviction that powerful images will always move the needle more than anything else when it comes to raising awareness about the shocking damage climate change causes. “It’s gotta be beautiful,” Nicklen once said. “It’s gotta teach you something and it’s gotta make you care.”

While their conservation work does come ashore at times—they were integral in highlighting and stopping the construction of an 1,100 mile oil pipeline in British Columbia—the Canadian couple is now focused on Sea Legacy, a non-profit designed to rally the masses to join in their fight for what they call “healthy and abundant oceans.” Their weapon of choice in that fight? You guessed it: arresting images gathered during daring expeditions to remote and wild places.

14. ASHIMA SHIRAISHI, Climber

At 17 years old—and just over 5 feet tall—Ashima Shiraishi is the future of climbing. While climbing has long been a somewhat gender neutral pursuit, this slight young woman from New York City has won so many competitions and broken so many records that she may singlehandedly make gender-specific competition categories obsolete. Despite her young age, Shirashi is certainly not new to the sport. She began climbing at age seven and at age 10 became the youngest person ever to climb V10 (that’s climber speak for handholds the size of a nickel laying flat). At 14, she became the youngest person, and the first female, to complete a V15.

With so few sports out there that are totally blind to gender, size, and strength, rock climbing will be a particularly important discipline for the next generation. With climbing set to debut as an Olympic sport in 2020, her talent will go down in history for having helped usher in an era where size, shape, gender, age, and ethnicity get second billing to achievement.

15. CHRIS BURKARD, Adventure Photographer

It’s hard not to be moved by a photo of a climber clinging to a cliff face, 2,000 feet off the ground, or a skier mid-flight, or a surfer so deep in a barrel that you have to know what happens next. But it’s easy to forget that there is a person behind the camera in those same extreme conditions, capturing that image. Early on, Chris Burkard took a simple passion for watersports and photography to become a regular shooter for iconic outlets such as Surfer magazine and Transworld Surfing. The 32-year-old’s ability to use natural light to capture both the action and natural landscape in equal glory made him one of the most sought-after adventure photographers in the country. Meanwhile, the one-time wedding photographer seemed to simply continue pursuing his passions and his surf adventures became more and more legendary. And while he was amassing 3 million Instagram followers and several prestigious awards—including a Red Bull Illume award in 2010 and second place in the World Open of Photographers—Burkard produced four films, including 2017’s Under an Arctic Sky. In it, he captures some of the best surfers in the world shredding some of the coldest swell on the planet in Iceland. As we continue to be most transfixed by the unexpected, Burkard’s work is sure to remain our most exciting portal into the world of adventure.