Exploration of an remote valley by a small team in good style

Contact:  Hilary Maitland of Redpoint Creative 720.304.3599

For Immediate Release: March 29, 2002

Four Adventurers kayak and climb “unexplored” rivers and peaks in Chile, and fuel passion for preserving wild places

“Outside Magazine Presents: In the Shadow of the Condor” Premiering

Wednesday, April 17 at 9:00 PM ET/PT, 7:00 PM MT, 8:00 PM CT on Outdoor Life Network.

Executive Producer: Les Guthman

Story with Photos

Boulder, Colorado:  On Wednesday, April 17 at 9:00 PM ET/PT, Outdoor Life Network will premiere, "Outside Magazine Presents: In the Shadow of the Condor,"  an hour-long documentary produced  by Boulder, Colorado based Serac Adventure Films.   The work of award-winning filmmaker Michael Brown and producer Kim Johnson, of Outside Television will inspire viewers to join the fight to help preserve untouched lands threatened by humankind’s thirst to consume natural resources.    Three Boulder adventurers, Chris Morris, Luis Benitez, and three-time Emmy award-winning cinematographer Michael Brown team up with Chilean conservationist Pablo Sandor of the Ayacara Foundation, to kayak down an unknown river and forge their way to unclimbed peaks within the Corcovado Wilderness of Southern Chile. Morris, Benitez and Brown were part of the historic team that successfully climbed Mount Everest together last May with blind climber Erik Weihenmayer.

In the film "In the Shadow of the Condor" the team find themselves pulling their expedition gear up an unknown flooded Class V river in inflatable kayaks, thrust into a jungle five times as dense as the Amazon rainforest.  Every step carried the possibility of crashing through dead branches to an unseen forest floor, and a jungle where trees cling to nearly vertical mountainsides. The possibility of rescue here was perhaps more remote than in the high mountain reaches of Everest. Forced to make choices between their goals and mounting challenges, each individual decides on acceptable risk and the team splits into two groups. One team perseveres through the jungle and up rock faces to make a stunning discovery high up on the peak, an unrecorded lake, and never before seen vistas. 

The land the adventurers explore is part of the last frontier left in Chile but is owned by the Chilean military and its resources make it a prime target for exploitation.  Roads could be built, minerals could be mined from under the forest, the trees are in danger of being logged and the river is in a prime location to be dammed and flooded for power. Like our Alaska, controversy abounds. Pablo Sandor's goal is to work with the government and military to create a world park. This is not an easy task since few personal property rights exist in Chile, and some people's daily survival is dependent on cutting down trees.

The film also profiles two Americans, Rick Klein a forest activist and Doug Tompkins, co-founder of The North Face and founder of Esprit.  Since 1988 Doug Tompkins has created an ambitious land trust program and has purchased 800,000-acres of land to create Pumalin Park, one of the world's largest privately funded park initiatives. However Doug cannot protect any more land since the Chilean government put a freeze on his ability to purchase more.

"In the Shadow of the Condor" masterfully creates a story where adventure and environmental concerns are woven together with a balanced perspective. With the adventurers we see what Michael Brown articulates, "The human race needs to decide what we will leave wild and what we need to use to survive, and this place we need to leave."

The leader in adventure TV, Outdoor Life Network (www.OLNTV.com) offers more outdoor recreation programming than any other network.  The 24-hour cable network, now available in over 45 million homes, is the leading source for television coverage of outdoor adventure sports and outdoor leisure recreation.