The Matterhorn at 14,692 ft in the Swiss Alps is arguably the most famous mountain in the world.  By extreme luck, I was able to reach its summit with my guide Alfons Franzen at age 14 (in 1958!).  The summit is not a point but a ridge 100 feet or so long and only 2 feet wide, like a knife blade in the sky.

This was my formative great adventure that set me on my life path.   For over forty years that path has been providing friends and clients with great adventures for their own lives.  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #30 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

You’re looking face on Everest’s West Ridge, the border of Tibet and Nepal.  On the right is the Southwest Face in Nepal, on the left is the North Face in Tibet.  Called Scoundrel’s View because this is a better view than trekkers to Everest Base Camp see (a viewpoint called Kala Patthar).

You have to make another trek up the Ngozumpa glacier (longest in the Himalayas) in the Gokyo valley, where above the fifth Gokyo lake at 16,400 feet you get to call yourself a “scoundrel” for seeing what Everest trekkers don’t.

High on the Northeast Ridge on the left horizon is the last place Mallory and Irvine were seen heading for the summit in 1924, and then disappeared.  Hillary and Tenzing summited in 1953 via the Southeast Ridge over the right horizon.  Everest Base Camp in Nepal is at the foot of the big snowy buttress below the West Ridge.  Called the West Shoulder, it blocks any view of Everest from Base Camp.

On our Himalaya Helicopter Expeditions, we get an abundance of spectacular views of Everest, up close and personal – Scoundrel’s View is only one of many. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #29 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Charlatans like Erich von Daniken convinced many gullible readers of his books this “monster” was of an alien in a space suit.  Real archaeologists know it’s of an ancient tribal shaman, to be found among the greatest profusion of prehistoric rock art on earth over 10,000 years old in a remote plateau of the Algerian Sahara called the Tassili n’Ajjer. 

There are no roads – you must climb up here with pack mules carrying your supplies. No one lives up here, it’s uninhabited. You’ll be among spectacularly gigantic rock formations with over 300 huge natural rock arches, so geologically unique it seems unworldly.  In the center of Tassili n’Ajjer known as the Tadrart is a vastly deep gorge, like a knife sliced open the mountain.  Clamber down to the bottom and you will discover a forest of 2,000 year-old Saharan cypress trees – yes, a forest in the Sahara, remnants of when the Sahara was green millennia ago.

My son Jackson and I explored here in 2003.  Perhaps it’s time to be here again. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #28  photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The men of the Intha people living on Inle Lake in Burma have a unique way to fish.  Using their large conical nets, they row by standing on one leg on the prow of their canoe, and paddle with their other leg.  They feed their families this way.  Burma (Myanmar) is one of the most picturesque, historical, and serene places on earth.  We’ll be there again next February. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #27 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

900 years ago, the Church of Saint George (Bete Giyorgis in Amharic) was not built – it was hand carved downwards from a horizontal rock ledge.  There is nothing like the rock-hewn churches in Lalibela anywhere else in the world.

Christianity was established in Ethiopia in 330 AD and has flourished ever since.  Experiencing the devotion still so very much alive in one of the oldest Christian countries on earth is inspiring.  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #26 photo ©Jack Wheeler)