Twenty of the world's top athletes and explorers share their wildest dream trips—a dazzling list of never attempted feats daunting to even these world-class competitors. For the rest of us, consider their must-do adventures—and start planning. —Kate Siber
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Photograph by Momatiuk-Eastcott/Corbis
Big-Mountain Skier
On his legendary quest to rescue the sailors of the Endurance, Sir Ernest Shackleton undertook one of the hairiest small-boat crossings ever recorded—800 nautical miles across the insane-making conditions of the Southern Ocean. Then he topped it off with an arguably more insane trek across rugged snow-buried South Georgia Island. Since then, the unsettled island hasn’t changed much at all, which is why it remains one of the last great unknown adventure destinations.
“My current dream trip would be to hire a sailboat with five or six of my friends, skiers, photographers, and filmmakers and document a trip to South Georgia Island,” says Chris Davenport. “The goal would be to try and re-create the amazing traverse of Sir Ernest Shackleton.” Along the way, they’d cross glaciers and snowfields, spot penguins and fur seals, and ski descents on peaks that top 9,600 feet. “This would be a monthlong trip to one of the world’s most beautiful and remote islands,” says Davenport.
Next: See Chris Davenport's Must-Do Trip: Ski Mount Rainier, Washington
Athlete Bio
Big-Mountain Skier
Since winning his first World Extreme Skiing Championships in Alaska in 1996, Chris Davenport has appeared in more than 20 ski films, has skied first descents in Antarctica, and was the first person to ski all 54 of Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks in a year.
