Posted: Oct 10, 2012 03:02 pm EDT (Newsdesk, updated Apr 15, 2013 08:42 am EDT) Jerzy Porębski uses social media, art and new web technology to illustrate expeditions. His latest comic flipbook is about the first Amazon kayak run in 1985-86.
“This expedition was really important for world exploration and this comic book remembers it,” says Jerzy to ExplorersWeb.
Jerzy Porębski, born 1956 in Bielsko-Biała, Poland, is a Polish documentary film producer, scriptwriter, screenwriter and director.
Polish Piotr Chmielinski, member of the 1985-86 Amazon kayak run, writes: “Twenty six years ago I was part of the team that completed the first navigation of the full length of the Amazon River, including the famous Acobamba Abyss, a feat that thus far no one has repeated. My participation in that expedition grew out of an earlier journey with Canoandes-79, a group of Polish kayakers who, in the course of paddling rivers in Europe and across both Americas, made the first descent of Peru’s Colca Canyon; long considered the deepest canyon on the planet.
The success of the Amazon Source-to-Sea Expedition of 1985-1986 was due to the involvement of all of its members, but the most important were the great kayakers, Jerome Truran and Tim Biggs (both South African). As well, the final success would not have been achieved without Joe Kane, Zbigniew Bzdak, and Kate Durrant.
Additionally, without the support of Jack Jourgensen, Bryce Anderson, Jacek Bogucki, friends from Casper, Wyoming and many friends in Peru and Brazil the expedition would not even have had a start.”
Their adventure is described in the book Running the Amazon by Joe Kane, which is now considered a classic of adventure literature. Now the expedition is presented in the form of this comic book.
Porebski did an online and paper edition about the biggest polish Himalayan tragedy, Everest '89, The Lho La Tragedy: Beginning of the End for Alpinist Magazine. He says to ExplorersWeb it will be available as a free flip book in about 3 months time. (Ed note: update Oct 11, 2012 04:26 am EDT, Jerzy added that he wrote The Lho La Tragedy script together with Bernadette McDonald.)
He also hopes to do more comic books on successful Polish exploration in Peru, like the first running of Colca Canyon in 1981.
[Ed note Apr 15, 2013 08:42 am EDT: According to an article in Outside Magazine of January 17, 2013, it turns out that the trip as described in Joe Kane's book may no longer count as the first descent. "New evidence, currently under review by a respected scientific journal, makes the case that the tributary where Chmielinski and Kane put in, the Apurimac, isn’t the true source of the river. [...] Last winter a San Diego whitewater-kayaking guide and former neuroscientist named James “Rocky” Contos, 41, was using Google Earth to plan a trip to Peru, to run the five major headwaters that feed the Amazon. As he plotted each of their lengths via GPS, he decided that the Mantaro, north and west of the Apurimac, was the real source."
[...] "Contos made good on his plan to motor to the sea. After finishing all of the whitewater sections of the lower Apurimac in September, he boarded a barge and sped past Hansen’s team to reach the Atlantic in early November, securing the first descent—if the Mantaro holds up as the Amazon’s real source."]
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