'He refused to quit:' Fundraiser for man on 27-year walk around the world comes to Banff - Rocky Mountain News

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'He refused to quit:' Fundraiser for man on 27-year walk around the world comes to Banff

In 1998, Karl Bushby left his home in England to walk around the world. Twenty-seven years later, he's on the home stretch.

Leah Pelletier, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Mar 5, 2026 4:00 PM

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1 / 1<br>Karl Bushby walks through Colombia in 2001. KARL BUSHBY PHOTO<br>Advertisement

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Listen to this article<br>00:11:33

BANFF – Climbing, swimming and crawling his way through a soup of frozen slush, frostbite is at hand, help is hours away and the horizon is nothing but ice-clogged sea in Karl Bushby&rsquo;s eyes.

At this point, in 2006, the British adventurer is eight years into his Goliath Expedition, a mission to walk around the entire world, but here, in the frigid grip of the Bering Strait – one of three &ldquo;gaps&rdquo; to cross during the trek — the journey seems to hang by a thread.

&ldquo;The ice in there never settles. It's always broken. It's always a mass crush freight train of moving ice that's going in all directions driven by strong currents and winds,&rdquo; says Bushby of the 80-plus kilometre choke point that connects Alaska to Russia&rsquo;s easternmost point.&rdquo;

&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a constant struggle.&rdquo;

Leaving the cobblestone streets of his home in Hull, England behind on Nov. 1, 1998, at age 29, the expedition has always had two rules: no mode of transportation other than Bushby&rsquo;s own two feet can be used and he can't return home until the worldwide trek is complete.

"I left my mother's house, walked down through the United Kingdom to test some equipment I was pulling at the time, said goodbye to my friends still in the army down south and then got on a plane," said Bushby recalling the first couple days of the journey.

What he initially estimated would take about 10-12 years to complete, has now stretched into year 27 as Bushby prepares for the last leg of the expedition and an expected return home in October 2026.

Back on the ice, the battle to cross the Bering Strait alongside French adventurer Dimitri Kieffer, in an attempt to continue his trek through Russia, wasn&rsquo;t even the crux of Bushby's adventure to date.

Starting at the southernmost point of South America in the late 90s, Bushby would encounter one of his biggest challenges crossing the Dari&eacute;n Gap, a treacherous stretch of jungle on the Colombia-Panama border.

&ldquo;You're in a war zone. The guerillas own that jungle and you&rsquo;re basically avoiding anything and everybody, sneaking through what is the frontline of a civil war basically at that point,&rdquo; said Bushby.

Dodging guerillas and drug lords through dense brush and swampy terrain, Bushby used the river as camouflage, even floating down it for four days at one point.

&ldquo;It would take me 10 days to go the distance it would take me one day on the road to get through that jungle,&rdquo; he said.

He recalls a confrontation with a caiman, a reptile in the alligator family, while floating a murky river in the Dari&eacute;n Gap.

&ldquo;It's pretty uncomfortable when you're faced with a two-metre-long crocodile in the water at nose level, it&rsquo;s not always ideal, but you leave them alone, they leave you alone kind of thing,&rdquo; he said of the encounter.

Coming out of the jungle unscathed, Bushby walked through Mexico and onto the USA in the early 2000s. By 2004, he crossed into Canada where his route would take him up through Alberta via the Trans-Canada Highway before a gruelling battle against winter and the harsh conditions of Alaska.

Bushby&rsquo;s &lsquo;why?&rsquo;

Bushby is always getting asked the same question: why?

Behind the unrivaled challenge, the answer comes in many layers for the Brit.

&ldquo;You can go back to all kinds of threads in my life and see parts of the bricks that built this house,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;The short answer basically is it's just an enormous challenge.  It kind of really got traction while I was in the army.&rdquo;

Spending his early years as a British paratrooper, lines across maps started to lure Bushby. Ideas and routes swirled and were tossed up with other members in Bushby's battalion.

&ldquo;One day my father had sent me a birthday card and in there was a note about how a couple of special forces guys had talked about being able to walk from London to New York … That's when we really started those lines and those maps kind of grew into something stupendous, incorporated the whole world not knowing why anyone would want to stop in New York,&rdquo; Bushby described. &ldquo;That big line encompassing all those continents was the point of no return.&rdquo;

With his gear cart, he calls "the beast," in tow,...