Bureau

Anthropologist and archaeologist Dr. Johan Reinhard has been selected to receive the Sir Edmund Hillary Mountain Legacy Medal for remarkable service in the conservation of culture and nature in mountainous regions.

The award will be presented at the Mountain Museum in Pokhara, Nepal, on December 11 (International Mountain Day) during Nepal’s annual Mountain Festival. Dr. Reinhard is a National Geographic Explorer, Senior Fellow with The Mountain Institute, and Research Professor with Future Generations University. He has published groundbreaking research on sacred landscapes, notably relating to Tibetan Buddhist beyul (hidden valleys that helped form the basis of the Shangri-La legend), Himalayan shamanism, sacred lakes of the Aztecs and Incas, and mountain-top Inca burials.

Dr. Kumar Mainali, president of Mountain Legacy, notes that the Medal both recognizes Sir Edmund Hillary’s own service on behalf of mountain people and their environment and also encourages the continuing emulation of Hillary’s example. Mainali adds that a key aspect of the Hillary Model is the conviction that our universal thirst for adventure can be fed by challenging projects of mountain research, conservation, and development. Recreation and stewardship should be two sides of the same coin. The life and career of Dr. Johan Reinhard perfectly embody that principle.

Like Sir Edmund, Reinhard is a world-class adventurer, with hundreds of ascents in the Andes and around the world. A native of New Lenox, Illinois, Reinhard participated in the successful American Bicentennial Everest Expedition of 1976. He conducted underwater excavations, crossed the Indian Thar desert on camel, participated in free-fall skydiving, holds a world record for high-altitude scuba diving, and notched first rafting descents of rivers including the Trisuli in Nepal.

Like Sir Edmund, also, Johan segued from a pursuit of adrenaline to a deeper interest in ancient landscapes and cultures. He is best known for his discovery of the pre-Columbian Ice Maiden mummy in 1996, but he has also offered explanations of some of South America’s greatest enigmas, including Machu Picchu, Tiahuanaco, and the Nazca Lines, enormous images (geoglyphs) formed in the Nazca Desert of Peru (which others guessed might be messages from extraterrestrial visitors), either are sacred paths leading to places from which rituals were performed to the surrounding water and mountain deities for water and the fertility of crops and animals, while the figures of plants and animals were formed to invoke water and fertility. In the 1960s and 1970s Reinhard conducted research with the last of the hunting and gathering peoples who first populated the rugged hills of western Nepal, and compiled studies of their vanishing languages, as well as providing the scholarly rationale for policies protecting their interests. He is currently following up on his research with one of those groups, the Raji of Nepal.

Johan Reinhard’s contributions have not gone unnoticed. Museums have been built in three countries to exhibit the archaeological discoveries made during Reinhard’s expeditions. Time Magazine has twice selected his finds as among the world’s ten most important scientific discoveries. Ford Motor Company recognized Reinhard as one of twelve Heroes for the Planet; he was awarded the Explorers Club Medal, the Rolex Award for Enterprise, and the Puma de Oro, Bolivia’s highest award for archaeological research. The Mountain Institute has issued a statement applauding his selection for the Mountain Legacy medal:

[We] are thrilled that Dr. Reinhard is receiving this much-deserved honor. Johan’s remarkable discoveries in the Himalayas and Andes are a treasured legacy not only for indigenous mountain communities but for all of us who care deeply about the world’s mountain regions. His dedication and deep interest in understanding and preserving mountain cultures have inspired many and continue to guide modern stewardship of mountain areas. We are so proud that another mountain leader associated with our Institute has won this prestigious medal. Like [Hillary medalists] Ang Rita Sherpa and Dr. Alton Byers before him, we consider Dr. Reinhard as more than an Institute senior fellow: he is a true mountain-hero-in-residence.

Photo courtesy of Johan Reinhard (Reinhard on Llullaillaco Volcano)