Christophe Vandaele

Christophe's long career in expeditions started as a teenager when solo-crossing the European Pyrenees mountain range after reading a book on "Le Chemin de la Liberte," made famous by British and American airmen who crossed the mountain range after parachuting to safety from being shot down over occupied Europe.

Christophe was a climber on the Discovery Channel documentary series "Everest Beyond The Limit," where he participated in a medical expedition study on the effects of prolonged living at high altitudes, A.M.S., HAPE, and HACE under Dr. Monica Piris.

In 2010, Christophe was part of the summit team on the Mont Blanc broadcasting live from Aiguille du Midi for the TedX Lajolla event "Human Limits from sea level to 4 Km. in 24hrs." on the effects of altitude on human bodies.

Later that year, he was part of the ground crew with Guatemala's Mayan Heritage and Nature Foundation's aerial mapping project with the Tulane University Department of Anthropology, which found thousands of previously undetected Mayan houses, buildings, defense works, and pyramids in the dense jungle of Guatemala's Peten, Witzna, and La Honradez regions.

After reading Hiram Bingham's notes at the Yale University Library on the Peruvian Expedition, Christophe became inspired to retrace the 1911 Yale Peruvian Expedition a centennial later. He recorded the deterioration of the ruins in the Urubamba Valley and compared native habitants living conditions, glacier levels, and effects of the introduction of electricity into the rural native Quechua communities in a century of modernization and the impact of mass tourism.

Christophe has been part of several North Pole Ski expeditions as an operations member to science teams installing WARM buoy G.P.S. for models monitoring absorption of solar energy into Arctic surface waters under the Department of Ocean, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. He also cross-country skied to Northpole on the Robert E.Peary Last Degree ski expedition as an operation logistics member of Sorbonne University's Oceanography and Climate Laboratory science team.

Christophe is a graduate of the Special Warfare Officer Training School at Marche-Les-Dames, Belgium, and was a member of a reconnaissance squadron with the Belgian Special Forces, with several deployments on the African continent in Rwanda, Zaire, Congo, and Somalia.

Christophe holds a B.A. in political and military science from the Belgian Royal Military Academy. In addition, he has Organizational Change and Managerial Economics certificates from The Wharton School of Business and Harvard Business school, respectively, and an Apiary Science certificate from Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Christophe currently serves as a mentor and guidance counselor for the United States Congressional Award for Physical Fitness and Expedition/Exploration, the Dr. Albert Einstein Supernova Award, and the Dr. Luis W. Alvarez Supernova Award.

He serves as a Unit STEM coordinator and STEM Nova counselor for the Gulf Stream Council of Scouts B.S.A., serving 1500 youth members throughout Palm Beach County, FL.