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Alastair Humphreys wins my vote in NatGeo’s Adventurer of the Year poll (voting at that link).  From NatGeo’s write up:

“Break down the elitism in adventure—that was my goal,” says Alastair Humphreys. The 34-year-old Brit has ridden his bike 46,000 miles around the world, crossed Iceland’s rugged glacial highlands on foot, and set his sights on the longest unsupported journey to the South Pole. But in 2011, Humphreys never left his native U.K. He barely even left the county.

Instead he embarked on a year of microadventures—small, local trips that began and ended at his doorstep. He hiked Britain’s most reviled stretch of road, the M25, a clogged transit artery that circles London through the swelling suburbs. He swam the Thames, used public transport to get out of the city and sleep out underneath the stars, and spent four days living off the land. Advanced Base Camp was his home in London’s suburbs.

“Each trip ticked all the boxes of adventure. It was cold. It was physically challenging. I talked to people I wouldn’t have otherwise met,” says Humphreys. What he learned was clear—we find adventure by stepping outside of our day-to-day norms.

To share his idea and inspire others, Humphreys devised a series of ten challenges in the form of four-minute video trip reports (watch one above) encouraging would-be adventurers to sign up for a race, to take advantage of the hours before and after work, and to pick a random point on a map and visit it. The idea caught on through Twitter. Word spread and people began sending in trip reports and homemade videos via Twitter. They came in from as far away as Japan. This year the idea traveled farther than the adventurer.