Deborah Levine Latter is many things, but perhaps the most the relevant in this context is "married to Bill." Although she is an astronomer at Caltech, with expertise in space-based observatory science operations and astronomical data archives, she has lately had difficulty concentrating on anything other than Bill's Death Valley effort. She is serving as something between Crew Chief and Chief Logistics Officer and will be on and off the course during the event making sure Bill and the rest of his crew are well supplied with ice, food, drink, clean laundry, crash space, quarters and dollars for the ice machines and moral support. She will be trying very hard not to scream "Stop this madness!" upon viewing and/or taping his feet. When she actually has time to think about other things, she creates equestrian-themed handmade jewelry (www.jewelrybydeborah.com), enjoys cooking, rides dressage, practices yoga, is slave to a Green Cheeked Conure and 3 cats, reads tons of "popcorn" mysteries and some good books and spends entirely too much time playing Spider. She's also been known to write poetry. Rhonda Provost
In August of 1995, Rhonda Provost of Forestville, California, became the first woman to run from Badwater in the heart of Death Valley to the peak of Mt. Whitney, and back—a distance of nearly 300 miles. The course is famous for starting at the lowest point (-282 feet) in the Western Hemisphere and running to the highest point (14,494 feet) in the contiguous U.S. Death Valley is also famous for sporting the highest summer temperatures in the world.
She completed the grueling course in 143:45, just under six days. In the process, she became the eighth runner to complete the "out-and-back" course. Click here to read more about Rhonda.
Rich Benyo
Rich is the president of the board and race director of the Napa Valley Marathon and has been on the board of directors since 1985. He is also the 1998 winner of the RRCA journalist of the year award. (The RRCA apparently is unaware of his running aberrations.) In early 2005 RunningUSA inducted Rich into its Hall of Champions. For more than a decade, Rich has portrayed Mark Twain at a mid-summer Koyote Howling Ritual in the middle of the wilderness with roughly 100 guys who spend the weekend drinking beer, smoking cigars, and howling at the moon. Rich is the editor of Marathon & Beyond, a bimonthly magazine devoted to the marathon and to ultrarunning. Rich and his wife Rhonda currently live in Forestville, Sonoma County, California; in their spare time, they are attempting to learn to sail on the San Francisco Bay.
Bernhard Schulz
Bernhard Schulz is an astrophysicist working on astronomical instrumentation for space missions, primarily at far infrared and submillimeter wavelengths. He started his career after completing his PhD at the European Space Agency with the Infrared Space Observatory and is currently occupied with the Herschel Space Telescope at the California Institute of Technology. He holds a Diploma in Physics, a PhD in Astronomy, and is author and co-author of numerous publications in scientific journals. Married, with cats but no kids, he lives in California, pursuing, as far as his professional life allows, numerous other hobbies and interests, with photography, scuba diving, squash, aeromodeling and music being his older affections, while more recent activities include flying of single engine aircraft, film acting and videography.Bernhard says, "I think the reason why I am doing this has to do with the fact that extremes have always interested me. This is an opportunity to experience a very extreme place, experience extreme conditions and participate in a quite extreme activity. I guess the term extreme in the previous sentence could also be substituted somewhat by the meaning of new, unexplored, or special."
Nancy Silbermann
I live in Pasadena, CA. I enjoy walking everywhere (including to work). I took up hiking about 12 years ago and wander mostly in the local southern California mountains.I have known Bill for over 10 years. Why am I helping crew for Bill? I have no idea. But I will be urging him along on Mt. Whitney.
Jenny Stinson
