Imagine dangling upside down, 200 feet in the air, unexpectedly caught in the device that’s supposed to be helping you rappel down the mountain. That’d be enough to make most people panic. Not Jeska Clark.
“This sounds so silly, but my hair was hanging down — I had longer hair then — and it got caught in my gri-gri, and then I got webbing caught in the gri-gri, so I was stuck and I was flipping upside down,” recalls Clark, 35, explaining how she was practicing self-rappelling in 2023 while living in Phoenix, Arizona, when she got caught up in her belaying device. “I flipped upside down. And I was, like, ‘Ooooohh, OK. So, I’m stuck here. It looks like I’m going to have to get out of this.’ There was no one around, and I was, like, “OK, I have to think my way out of this.’”
Thankfully, Clark, who lives in Bend, has made a study of human performance and how to deal with high-stress, high-risk situations. She has a master’s degree in human systems engineering (human factors) from Arizona State University and is a human-performance specialist. Her expertise is taking lessons learned from extreme environments and applying them to everyday life, or the occasional not-so-ordinary situation, such as being caught upside down in a gri-gri.
Clark managed to insert a quick-draw clip into the mountain wall and connect it, thereby enabling her to “change the distribution of my weight” and disconnect from the gri-gri, get herself unstuck, reattach to the gri-gri, and finish rappelling down the mountain. Even when she touched ground, she wasn’t fazed.
“I was just like, ‘Oh, all right. Well, that was good.’ And I looked at my dog, and she was wagging her tail, and I thought, ‘We can go home or do it one more time.’ So I did it once more,” Clark adds with a chuckle, as she sips a cortado at a Bend cafe while recalling what would be a scary experience for most people. She said anyone can apply the tactics she’s learned to help work through tough situations.
“When it comes to doing really challenging things, I mentally prepare myself with visualization and different types of training to not have that fear point,” she said, explaining that when she encounters a stressful situation, she mentally goes “backwards” through her training to find potential solutions, considers the gear she’s got that could help, and uses calming techniques to help keep her cool. When collaborating with a team, she considers those factors on a broader scale.
“What do my teammates have on them that can get them out of this safely, or what do I know about them that will give them comfort in this situation?” she said. “You kind of break down all the factors. I’ll feel the initial fear potentially, but I’m like, ‘OK, wait, hold on. It’s going to be fine. Think your way out of this.’ Being in a panicked state doesn’t help anyone. I know that intellectually. And then with different visualizations and mental training that I have performed, I can override my nervous system and calm it down and not really have that fear factor.
“Even if you’re not a sportsman, everybody’s been in a situation where they panic, or they get just super stressed,” she added. “I’ve done yoga for 20 years now, and I do a lot of breath work. Breath work helps stabilize your nervous system. I would say that if someone is really stressed, do a box count. You breathe in for a count of four and out for four. Your body doesn’t know the difference between a tiger attacking you versus a stressful email, right? I would say breath work is always great and being consistent with it and letting yourself know that it’s going to be OK.”
Her unflappable nature no doubt partly stems from a childhood battle with severe asthma, during which she’d do nightly nebulizer treatments while watching people “do cool things” on TV and wishing she could beat the asthma to one day pursue similar adventures. Her numerous outdoor treks have contributed to her ease with stressful situations, including climbing mountains across North and South American and the Himalayas, diving in oceans around the world, and even attending space camp as part of her research into extreme environments.
“While she’s got endless credentials and amazing experience and everything that you need to make sure that you’re safe and secure and prepared, I think my favorite part is that she has a spirit of adventure that’s just so strong in her. She’s just loving every second, and she takes such joy (in adventure),” said Danica Carey, 45, who met Clark three years ago during polar training in Minnesota. “I think I found a lot of alignment with that because I love digging into the logistical things, the details of things, but at the end of the day, it’s a lot of work to just be able to relax and have a good time. Maybe relaxing at negative 20 (degrees Fahrenheit) doesn’t sound super fun to everyone, but we were tent mates in our last (polar) training, and we just had a great time. The camaraderie of women and expeditions and outdoor adventures was really fun to have together.”
The two women were part of a larger group undergoing rigorous training with acclaimed polar adventurer, Eric Larsen, and dealt with grueling, harsh conditions while learning how to prepare for polar travel. And they had a blast doing it.
“Jeska has one of those most amazing balances between having a very calm, knowledgeable demeanor–she’s definitely like a steady-in-a-storm type personality — but she’s also very light-hearted, super quick with a laugh,” said Carey.
Clark and Carey will build on that camaraderie when they undertake an Arctic expedition in May 2027. Clark will lead the expedition’s team of Black adventurers as they pay homage to Matthew Henson, one of the most accomplished Arctic explorers of his time and the first African American to reach the North Pole. The team won’t follow Henson’s exact route. Instead, they’ll traverse Greenland in his honor, as Clark said it was a “significant part of his journey” to the North Pole. Depending on geopolitical situations when the expedition begins, the group will further trek to the North Pole. They’ll be pulling sleds that weigh approximately 250 pounds, carrying their food, fuel, and cameras, and trekking between 10 to 14 hours each day to cover approximately 400 miles, during which they’ll shoot footage for a documentary.
Phil Henderson, executive director of the nonprofit Full Circle Expeditions, is a luminary in the world of mountaineering and adventure. He’s summited Mt. Denali twice and lead the first all-African American team up Mt. Kilimanjaro in 2018. He does a Mt. Kilimanjaro expedition annually. In 2022, he led the first all-Black climbing team up Mount Everest. The team spent 58 days on the mountain, and seven of the team’s eight climbers summitted. Clark helped plan and coordinate the trip and its comprehensive logistics. The trip is detailed in Full Circle: The First All-Black Everest Ascent documentary that had its world premier in June at the 2026 Tribeca Festival. Henderson is now helping Clark similarly with the Arctic expedition.
“When I was putting together the Everest expedition, she played a big role,” said Henderson, 63. “I was the team leader, but she was able to make a connection and talk with the team in ways and at a time where I wasn’t present.
“It’s almost like our roles are switched,” he added. “Jeska is now in a leadership role for (the Arctic) team, and I just try and help coach her through that process of putting together the team and the logistics and the planning. I’m more of a sounding board for her.”
He said while leading an expedition is a daunting task, Clark’s attention to detail and her positive perspective will serve her well.
“There’s no manual for leading an expedition because you have to be so fluid and flexible with things that may occur. I truly believe the hardest part of expeditions is everything on the front end. It’s everything you put into it before you even go that allows things to run smoothly. And I think that she’s putting in the work on the front end, and that’s what really makes a difference. I think she’ll do well,” Henderson said, adding, “Sometimes, you need to have someone who’d just positive all the time, no matter what’s happening. And I think Jeska is that person because she could bring a smile to a time when nobody’s smiling.”
Saveria Tilden, founder of Bend’s AdventurUs, an organization that creates inclusive adventure travel experiences for women, said Clark is an inspiring role model. AdventurUs hosted Clark earlier this year to discuss her Arctic expedition as part of its “Empowering Women Through Adventure” speaker series.
“I think, for me, representation is so important because if you don’t see it, you can’t imagine it,” said Tilden. “If all you see are a certain, you know, kind of person doing the same thing over and over again, or if you don’t see women in leadership, if you don’t see women leading a team, you can’t imagine yourself doing it, right? I think there’s something to be said for that. And I think in any industry, and in any field, when little girls grow up and they see women doing these awesome things, it opens their eyes, like ‘Oh, I could do that, too.’ I think representation is incredibly important, and I think telling the stories and being seen is also incredibly important to inspire other people.”
Clark moved to Bend two years ago from Phoenix with her now-husband, Stephan Jeanes, 38, an energy distribution consultant who she met on a plane while traveling from Atlanta, Georgia, to Phoenix during the Covid pandemic. They talked the whole flight, exchanged numbers, and built a friendship that eventually turned romantic. They got married last October in Sunriver, which is a long way from her childhood home of Augusta, Georgia. She grew up playing a variety of sports and eventually discovered an unexpected path while larking about with her brother on a shopping trip.
“I was looking for a new sport when I was a teenager. I did other sports here and there, but it wasn’t anything that stuck,” she recalls. “Me and my family went to North Carolina to a mall, and they had a little fencing gear shop. Me and my brother were fencing with a sword in the store, and we got kicked out. But I was like, ‘Hey, this is really cool.’”
Once back home, Clark joined the Augusta Fencers Club, training daily and eventually competing at the 2007 Junior Olympics. When it was time to go to college, she chose ASU for several reasons.
“I wanted to leave the South,” she said. “I never really felt like it was a place I needed to be, and my grandfather was living out there in Phoenix, and also, they had an Arabic program, and they had a fencing program,” she said, explaining that she got her undergraduate degree in communications with a minor in Arabic, intending to go into the Peace Corps after college. She fenced for ASU on scholarship, eventually becoming captain of the team, and focused on her studies and a slew of new challenges she discovered after joining the Arizona Outdoors club at ASU.
“That’s when I got into rock climbing and backpacking and a lot of the sports that I do now. From there, that kind of took over my life. After college, I immediately section-hiked the Appalachian Trail, from Georgia to Virginia,” she recalls. “After that, I had different jobs in different sectors, but the human performance part, or being in extreme environments, just kind of kept coming up, so I decided, ‘You know what? Let’s do bigger trips and let’s have more impactful trips to be able to help people.’”
That led her back into the classroom to get her master’s degree and into extreme environments as part of her research. She’s fascinated with the psychological and physiological effects of those environments on humans and how to help people weather potentially stressful everyday conditions.
“For example, if you’re on a pickleball team or something along those lines, and you’re trying to get your team to be really honed in on your goal of making championships, for example, what you would do is (think about the) human factors component, like what is something that I can do to make my performance better. From a physiological standpoint, we’ll maybe have compression socks that help make your legs not fatigue as fast if that’s the problem you’re having, or have certain lighting to be able to minimize eye fatigue when you’re hitting. Or have the team come together and sit down and talk about the goals and objectives. It’s kind of a systematic approach to handling and optimizing a situation.”
She’ll employ the systematic approach when helping her team prepare for the Arctic expedition, for which she’s currently working on raising funds and securing sponsors through the nonprofit Full Circle Expeditions. The Arctic team members have individual training they perform, and the group has undergone polar training.
“Those entail just getting your systems down. It’s really important to get your systems dialed out, as some would say,” Clark said. “Everything from washing your face, if you want to do that, to eating food or drinking water or using the bathroom can be susceptible to frostbite, right? So even your layering system…you can’t sweat too much because then you’ll get too cold. You have to have your systems down, like what layering system works. Do I need three base layers? Do I need six? Do I need one? Everybody’s slightly different, depending on personal preference and whether you run hot or cold.”
Processes. Systems. Composure. All are vital on an adventure as potentially harrowing as an Arctic expedition, as is having the positive attitude that you can weather anything, Clark said.
“It’s definitely helped, me being a positive person, because I’ve been in a lot of situations where things definitely don’t always seem like they’re going to work out, and then you have to change and pivot. Maybe because I’ve pivoted so many times in my life, I’m just, like, ‘It’s going to be fine,’” Clark said. “Life just throws so many things at you, and I always think of different situations as seasons. If nature goes through seasons, so do humans, right? So I’ll think, ‘Oh, this is my winter season.’ It’s not a good or bad thing. It’s just winter, right? So, this is my spring. This is my fall. That’s kind of how I think about things, and I understand that nothing is permanent.”
This article appears in the Source July 2, 2026.
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