This Adventurer Traveled To New Heights, Then Reached The Depths

It's unlikely that Dr. Charles Brush, past president (1978-80) of the New York chapter of the Explorers Club, will ever enjoy the fame of such fellow club members as Admiral Peary ( North Pole), Charles Lindbergh ( Atlantic Ocean), Sir Edmund Hillary (Everest), Neil Armstrong (moon) or even George Willig (South Tower, World Trade Center). That doesn't bother Brush, who derives his satisfaction from doing. Recently the 59-year-old Yale anthropologist led a five-man expedition in a scuba-diving exploration of the world's highest body of water—a crater lake atop the dormant volcano Licanc�bur on the border between Chile and Bolivia, about 19,300 feet above sea level. The highest previous dive was at 14,900 feet and Brush's team could only guess what the physical consequences of oxygen deficiency would be on a dive more than three-quarters of a mile higher. The team had no problem and made 11 dives into the frigid lake over a period of five days.

Brush scored a double victory. Not only did his group set an altitude record for diving—a nice paradox—but it also discovered that the lake was teeming with life, including minute red plankton that may be a hitherto unknown species. Samples of the plankton are now being studied at Yale.

For Brush, the Licanc�bur trip was just the latest in a series of adventures. He made important archeological digs in Mexico in 1961 and a decade later, at 49, reversed directions and took up mountaineering. In the 10 years since, Brush has climbed some of the highest peaks in the world, including Kilimanjaro, McKinley and Aconcagua. He has driven the length of Africa, from Algiers to Capetown, in a rally, raised cattle and sugarcane, run an airline catering business in the West Indies and race-walked in both the 1981 and 1982 New York marathons. He also found time to meet and fall in love with Ellen Sparry, now his wife, during a doctoral class in European lower paleolithics in a Columbia University subbasement. Let Hillary or Willig or Armstrong match that.