Adventurer with purpose

As a young man in the early 1970s, Richard Bangs conquered wild rivers of the world on a raft: the Omo (Ethiopia), the Zambezi (Zambia), the Coruh (Turkey), the Indus (Pakistan), the Apurimac (Peru), The Yangtze (China) and the Tatshenshini (Alaska/Yukon).

He used these white-water rafting experiences to organize a company to help other adventure-minded rafters run many of the same rivers. It quickly became the leading white-water outfitter and, after merging with another company in 1991, is now the world's largest and oldest adventure travel operator, Mountain Travel/Sobek.

But Mr. Bangs' reputation as the "father of modern adventure travel" stems not only from taking people to wild places; he has also brought those places to the people -- first in words and pictures, authoring a bibliography that has now grown to 14 books and more than 500 articles.

He writes with precision, passion and poetry, capturing the romance of adventuring, the uniqueness of Earth's places, and the realities of undertaking difficult journeys. "Riding the Dragon's Back," the book he published with Christian Kallen recounting the dramatic race to be the first to raft down the Yangtze, won the Lowell Thomas Award for the best travel book of 1989.

Now at age 57, Mr. Bangs recently published "Adventures With Purpose: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Earth" (Menasha Ridge Press) and is hard at work on a companion venture, a public television series filmed in high definition under the same name.

In this book he recounts his journeys to 16 special places, from the Annapurna to Zambia, locations he has visited enough to understand their essence and see how they have changed over time, and not always for the better.

"I've spent a career designing and conducting adventures with purpose, travel that is expectantly meaningful and designed to make a difference," he writes. "But the graveyard of my own sacred places gone speaks to regrets and quests not fulfilled."

Early to appreciate the importance of electronic communications and the emerging Internet, Mr. Bangs became the founder and editor-in-chief of Mungo Park, a pioneering Microsoft travel publishing effort that featured dispatches from around the world, and he was on the executive team that founded Expedia.com, where he served as editor-at-large. In addition, he created www.terra-quest.com, which offers online virtual adventures.

At the same time, he has worked hard to save the places he reveres, including efforts that halted a huge mining operation that threatened the Tatsheshini in the Canadian Yukon.

A proponent of transformational travel -- the idea that firsthand exposure to wild and majestic places can alter perceptions as much as exposure to museums and culture -- Mr. Bangs realized the impact these adventures had on the people who took them.

Yet just as the travelers were changed, so were the places they visited.

Experiencing so much raw Earth has given Mr. Bangs a unique perspective that has evolved over time.

Initially captivated by the adrenaline rush of running raging river rapids and the thrill of accomplishing what no one else had before, he increasingly returned from his adventures with ever greater appreciation of both the majesty and fragility of these wild places. Where he once viewed landscapes as obstacles to be overcome, he came to perceive them as treasures to be preserved.

His new public television series, also titled "Adventures With Purpose," involves hourlong documentaries that combine adventure travel, eco-consciousness and historical perspectives. (While the series is not currently carried on WQED, DVDs can be purchased at www.AdventuresWithPurpose.tv.

The series' first episode, "Egypt: Quest for the Lord of the Nile," debuted in November and tells the tale of a civilization inextricably bound to its river and the crocodiles that once inhabited it. The second episode, "New Zealand: Quest for Kaitiakitanga," previews this month and takes viewers from the southernmost reaches to the northern tip of that down-under world. A similarly titled companion book, also published by Menasha Ridge, will be released on March 1.

We reached Mr. Bangs this week in Switzerland,, where he's working on the next episode, which follows past expeditions up the Eiger, the Alps' most lethal peak.

"I appreciate the opportunity this series gives me to get more deeply into the fabric of a place," he explained, "the time to explore its history and work to understand its people and ecology. It's a rare opportunity." He hopes to produce as many as four new episodes a year.

This much is certain. When it comes to appreciating the higher purposes of adventure travel, communicating them to a broad audience and then transforming that interest into action, Richard Bangs has been and continues to be a world-class practitioner.