PNW Chapter Officers 2024
Chapter Chair
Eric Rasmussen
Treasurer
Gay Mathews
Membership chair
Mark Kerr
Program chair
Chris Morrison
Administrative officer
Jackie Delie
Media AND OUTREACH Manager
Hundreds of explorers call the Pacific Northwest home, meet a few of our chapter members. Check back often for new featured profiles.
Member Feature
John All
John All, JD, PhD, is a global explorer and geoscientist, specializing in climate change research in remote locations and is the author of Icefall: Adventures at the Wild Edges of our Dangerous, Changing Planet. His work is broadly focused on fragile, indicator environments, in particular the world’s highest mountains, where changing climate has profound consequences. He is an advocate for adaptive strategies to cope with changes now occurring and his research is focused on hard science that informs public discourse. Dr. All works primarily in Peru and Nepal, but has led expeditions on five continents to extreme locations -- from deep caves to tropical rain forests; remote deserts to the great mountain ranges of Asia and South America. All successfully summited Mt. Everest, Denali, Artesonraju, Mt. Blanc de Tacul, Alpamayo, El Capitan, and hundreds of other mountains around the world. He is really excited about the Pacific Northwest Chapter because it has an amazing and diverse group of people who are all passionate about exploration.
Michele Westmorland
Michele Westmorland is a freelance photographer with a range of skills, including worldwide travel, cultural, and underwater photography. Michele understands the need to tell a visual story, whether it covers exotic locations or the wonders of the natural world. Her years of diving have led Michele to being an active proponent of marine conservation issues. In addition she is passionate about the culture of Melanesia as highlighted by her project Headhunt Revisited. Michele is especially proud be to a Senior Fellow of the International League of Conservation Photographers and serves as a photographer representative on the Board of Directors.
David Ball
Since early childhood Dave Ball has been fascinated by birds, especially raptors—hawks, eagles, falcons, and owls. Several decades ago, he became involved in a raptor banding project. Over many fall seasons, he and other volunteers spent their days huddled in several makeshift shelters on top of a mountain ridge in New Jersey. Typically they would capture, measure, and release about a thousand birds of prey. Tracking these predators year to year somewhere between Cuba and Argentina, birds’ band numbers would be reported back to the US Fish & Wildlife Service. David has also helped or observed in other raptor banding and censusing projects in Florida, Mexico, and Israel.
David’s hands-on exploration of the natural world started well below the sky—underground, in fact. In high school, he and friends explored a number of undeveloped caves in the Hill Country of south Texas, and that interest expanded to studying invertebrate cave animals in Kentucky and West Virginia.
![[Credit Erin Ranney]ROV_HERC_LAUNCH.jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c8aac15840b16c64cc60e35/1572472495630-P43NVB3WJSDNDNJEBFJG/%5BCredit+Erin+Ranney%5DROV_HERC_LAUNCH.jpg)
Megan Cook
Megan Cook is a deep ocean explorer, STEM education program manager, and public speaker. Working for Ocean Exploration Trust, Megan conducts exploration of poorly understood parts of the ocean onboard Exploration Vessel Nautilus and she travels the nation speaking to students and supporting STEM educators and storytellers in developing ocean literacy. She transports minds to the largest habitat on Earth seeking discoveries in biology, geology, chemistry, and maritime history. Her communication talent is grown from a broad international marine operations expertise as a researcher, small boat coxswain and technician, submarine copilot, SCUBA professional, freediver, invasive species wrangler, as well as writer and international public speaker. Megan is a proud alumna of Oregon State University, a Young Explorer for Mission Blue, and North America’s 2012 Rolex Scholar for Our World Underwater Scholarship Society.
Captain Lynn Danaher
Captain Lynn has spent her life around the marine environment. She is a student of Polynesia, studying extensively on my own, in the field as well as at the University of Hawaii. In 1970, her spirit of adventure took me to Alaska, where she spent five years homesteading, and spent 14 years as a commercial fisherman. During this time, Lynn served 5 years on the Board for the largest State Park in Alaska, explored most of the coastline from Alaska to Seattle, and worked on the front lines during the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. Lynn left Alaska in 1994 and started a successful whale watch company in the San Juan Islands while also traveling to all seven continents and voyaging the length and breadth of the Pacific Ocean.
Lynn has been the Director of the Friday Harbor Film Festival, fhff.org, since its inception in 2013 giving her the opportunity to showcase stories from the Pacific Rim and beyond to entertain audiences through the art of compelling storytelling, inspire audience members, as well as filmmakers to be a force for positive change, and enlighten by conveying relevant information and expanding appreciation of our fragile planet, diverse cultures and those daring to explore new frontiers.
Jackie Delie
Jackie Delie grew up in the Great Northwest of Washington State and graduated from Franklin University Switzerland with a degree in Environmental Studies, and is currently pursuing a master's in Wildlife Science with a specialty in Social Sciences at Oregon State University. Specifically, she is conducting an interdisciplinary study that focuses on the spatial analysis of human-black bear tolerance in Oregon. She drives her curiosity and passion towards furthering her career in the field of conservation biology through various field research and exploration opportunities such as her previous work with Save the Elephants and The Tree Kangaroo Conservation Project. She joined the PNW Explorers Club Chapter in 2015, and The Explorers Club as a student member in 2017.
Bill Isherwood
Bill Isherwood began caving and climbing in 1956 and within two years was establishing virgin passageways in caves in West Virginia. In the early 1960s Bill worked for US Geological Survey in Alaska, stream gauging through many parts of the state. Bill took his experience to the St. Elias Icefield, sounding through ice to determine thickness. By 1965 he took first ‘radio depth sounding’ unit to Antarctica, to measure ice thickness on the Queen Maud Land Traverse II. Towing the antennae behind a snowcat Bill and his team found the deepest ice recorded at that time. He returned to the Antarctic for the following summer plus ‘winter over’, installing a seismic array that could help distinguish between earthquakes and underground nuclear explosions (especially near the antipode, where the Russian nuclear test site was located). After operating the station for its first full year, and identifying one Russian nuclear test, he returned to the US. By the early 1970s Bill was asked by his employer, Stanford Research Institute, to take over a program at Chulalongkorn University (in Bangkok) at which time he also met and married exploration-partner Dana. In the years since membership, we have climbed, traveled, and worked in extreme locations, including kayaking in remote areas of Alaska, Greenland, Baffin Island, New Zealand, Antarctic waters, etc. Bill has served as an Explorers Club officer for chapters in China, Colorado, San Francisco, and at home here in the Pacific Northwest.
Trent Tresch
Trent Tresch is a terrestrial, oceanic, and atmospheric explorer. Projects he has been involved with range from Antarctic glacier monitoring, deep sea shark recon, to high altitude technology testing. His main interests of high-altitude exploration have led him to pursue his master’s degree in astronautics and space studies. Having completed commercial spaceflight training programs, he also fosters an interest in engineering pressure vessels for human occupancy with his sights set on enabling future human space exploration. With the help of the Explorers Club Mamont Scholars Grant in 2019 he was able to complete his work on Astronaut Parafoil Deployment Handle Locations. As of 2020 he is working on a near space exploration flight to recover tomographic data on noctilucent clouds in the upper mesosphere. Explorers Club member since 2018.