British Guides headline at London Mountain Festival
Because it's there
Because the BMG are there! Because it's there is an Intelligence Squared Festival on Mountains on 15 June 2010 at the Royal Geographical Society in London
The first event of its kind in London, the Intelligence Squared Because it’s there Mountain Festival takes place from 6-9pm on June 15th 2010 at the Royal Geographical Society and will bring together film, seat-gripping tales of derring-do from the world’s best (and best-known) climbers and mountaineers and animated discussion about the true spirit of adventure. Come and hear the first British man and woman to climb Everest, the youngest member of Hilary’s successful Everest summit in 1953 and the guide who got Sir Ranulph Fiennes up the North Face of the Eiger and to the top of the highest mountain in the world on a summer’s evening at the very place that launched a number of the original record breaking expeditions. Whether you’re an armchair mountaineer, experienced climber or just an adventurer at heart you’ll enjoy this evening out.
Speakers include
- Doug Scott CBE has made 45 expeditions to the high mountains of Asia. He has reached the summit of 40 peaks, of which half were climbed via new routes or for the first time without the use of artificial oxygen and is the first Brit to summit Everest.
- George Band OBE was the youngest member of the first successful Everest expedition in 1953 and the first to climb Kangchenjunga, (the world’s third highest peak) then the highest unclimbed.
- Kenton Cool is a British (IFMGA) Mountain Guide and leading Alpine climber whose clients include Sir Ranulph Fiennes whom he took up the North Face of the Eiger and Everest. Kenton is the only European to summit Everest six times and to summit twice in a season, and on made the first British ski descent of Cho Oyu (an 8000m peak).
- Stephen Venables is a mountaineer, writer and broadcaster. Stephen was the first Briton to climb Everest without supplementary oxygen. Everest was a thrilling highlight in a career which has taken Stephen right through the Himalayas, from Afghanistan to Tibet, making first ascents of many previously unknown mountains.
- Rebecca Stephens MBE is a journalist and author. She’s the first British woman to have climbed Everest and the first English-speaking woman to climb the Seven Summits, the highest mountain on each of the seven continents.
- Peter Baily is a professional coach, climber and mountaineer who has climbed some of the most challenging mountains of Asia and America and is now working in Chamonix.
- Louise Turner is a mother, mountaineer, British (IFMGA) Mountain Guide, speaker, occasional writer and full time teacher. She has made first ascents of vertical walls in Baffin, Borneo, Britain, Greenland, Jordan, Madagascar, Mali, Norway, Pakistan, Patagonia and Venezuela. Louise worked at Plas Y Brenin - the National Mountaineering centre for 18 years where she became the first and only female Chief Instructor and is one of 6 female British Mountain Guides.
- Ed Douglas is a traveller, writer and mountaineer. His first book, about Everest, Chomolungma Sings The Blues, was published in 1997. Other books include Regions of the Heart, a biography of mountaineer Alison Hargreaves, who disappeared returning from the summit of K2 in 1995, and the first full-length biography of Tenzing Norgay.
Tickets are £25 each and available through the iq2 Mountain Festival website.Ticket price includes a complimentary glass of The King’s Ginger – the favoured tipple of "bon viveurs, high spirited ladies and sporting gentlemen!"
