Contributing Editor Larry Pynn named to the Explorers Club
Our adventurous Contributing Editor Larry Pynn has been welcomed into the Explorers Club. Based in New York, the multi-disciplinary club includes about 3,000 members in more than 60 countries; its honorary chair is the late Sir Edmund Hillary, first to climb Mount Everest in 1953. The organization was founded in 1904 to promote advancement in research, scientific exploration, and “the instinct to explore.”
It’s certainly not the first prestigious nomination for Pynn, also a longtime environment reporter for Vancouver Sun. He has received 15 journalism awards, including the Jack Webster Award for excellence in British Columbia journalism.
Some of his top adventures, Pynn says, have been in service of British Columbia Magazine. He made first ascents of three unnamed peaks—the tallest more than 2,400 metres–while researching an article for us on Clendinning Provincial Park, northwest of Whistler. (See “The Clendinning challenge,” Spring 2004.). To write “Pinballing down the Pitt” (Fall 2005), he made the first-known descent of the upper Pitt River, Greater Vancouver’s most remote tributary.
Other major journalistic exploits include a 19-day hike through the Northwest Territories on the Canol Trail, and exploration by kayak and foot of Sirmilik National Park in Canada’s high Arctic, north of Baffin Island. Pynn has also researched and written two non-fiction books: The Forgotten Trail: One Man’s Adventures on the Canadian Route to the Klondike and Last Stands: A Journey Through North America’s Vanishing Ancient Rainforests.
No question: our contributing editor is an adventurer of the first order. Congratulations, Larry!