Around Baikal with Men’s Health
Men’s Health magazine is providing informational support to the first-ever bicycling expedition around Lake Baikal. In February and March, five athletes from the United States and Venezuela will circumnavigate Lake Baikal using only mountain bikes to traverse the ice and snow. Others in the past have circled Baikal by automobile and even by horse, but nobody has ever ridden around the frozen lake on bicycles.
Over the course of eight weeks, the athletes will travel 2,100 kilometers (1,305 miles) and record a documentary film based on the “Siberian Sea,” as the lake is called. That work will be shown at the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour, a renowned extreme-sports festival. News, photographs and commentary from the participants will be posted on the project’s site at , and immediately after the conclusion of the expedition, a major report will appear on .
The expedition participants are:
Christopher Pike
Chris is a professional bike racer. He has completed two solo bicycling expeditions in Mongolia as well as bike treks in Kamchatka and the Gobi desert. Christopher is also an alpinist. He recently finished his postgraduate studies in the United States and defended a doctoral dissertation on the poetry of Fyodor Tyutchev.
Maikay Lopera
By profession, Maikay is a clinical exercise physiologist working at the Sacred Heart Medical Center in Springfield, Oregon. He is also a top-rate alpinist with the following ascents under his belt: new routes on el Pico Yanapaccha Noroeste in la Cordillera Blanca, Peru, Pico Humbolt in Venezuela, and Snowpatch Spire in Bugaboos, Canada.
Federico Pisani
Federico has made mountain ascents in Chile, Venezuela, Argentina and the United States. He is currently a Ph.D. student and works as a mountaineering guide in Nepal. Federico has made several documentary films that were included in the Banff film festival.
Marcus Tobias
Marcus is a professional architect. He also has over 24 years of adventure and mountaineering experience. In his home country, he is famous for being the first Venezuelan to scale Mt. Everest. He has also participated in expeditions on the Himalayas, the Andes and in Antarctica.
Eric Noll
American Eric Noll is a bicyclist, alpinist and traveler who has completed numerous bicycle expeditions in the United States, Canada, the Himalayas and Russia, where his two-week bicycling tour crossed the Altai mountains.
The expedition begins on February 20 and continues through April 12, 2010.
