2010 Mountainfilm Festival: Special Guests

Alex Beard	Freedom Riders	Greg Mortenson	Terry Root
Senator Michael Bennet	Mel Goldstein, Ph.D.	Erika Nelson	Joel Sartore
Josh Bernstein	Anthony Holbrooke	Hilaree O'Neill	Alexander Shulgin
Kenny Broad	Stefan Hunt	Timmy O'Neill	Wes Skiles
Greg Carr	Charlotta Janssen	Renan Ozturk	SquidShow Theatre
Theo Colborn	Chris Jordan	George Packer	John Vaillant
Tim DeChristopher	Rabbi Irwin Kula	James Prosek	Ed Viesturs
Joslyn Doerge	Katie Lee	Louie Psihoyos	Beth Wald
Lynsey Dyer	Maya Lin	Chris Rainier	Peter Whittaker
Gretel Ehrlich	Thomas Lovejoy	Rick Ridgeway	Jeff Zenick
Mike Fay	Prudence Mabhena	Joe Riis
Dave Foreman	Viviane Moos	Nicole Rosmarino

ALEX BEARD Alex Beard is a painter and author who has emerged as one of his generation's most creative and successful artists. Through his work, Beard hopes to demystify art and share the creative experience with as many people as possible, using every tool he can find. Influenced to think creatively from a young age by his uncle, noted photographer Peter Beard, Alex grew up among some of the world's most interesting and influential people -- Andy Warhol, Truman Capote, and their Pop World cohorts were familiar faces in the Beard household. Now, his artwork hangs on public and private walls around the world. In September 2009, Alex’s first children’s book, The Jungle Grapevine, was published, along with a companion set of kids’ games and puzzles featuring the book’s whimsical animal characters.

Senator Michael Bennet Michael Bennet has served most recently as the Superintendent of the Denver Public Schools. As a dedicated public servant with comprehensive experience as a businessman, Michael has a proven record of facing tough tasks at critical times. Prior to serving as Superintendent of the Denver Public Schools, Michael served for two years as Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper’s Chief of Staff. Michael oversaw the balancing of an historic budget deficit, the renegotiation of several collective bargaining agreements, and a complete redesign of the police oversight function. Before joining Mayor Hickenlooper’s administration, Michael was a Managing Director of the Anschutz Investment Company, where he had direct responsibility for the investment of over $500 million. Prior to moving to Denver, Michael served as Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice during the Clinton Administration. Michael earned his bachelor’s degree with honors from Wesleyan University and his law degree from Yale Law School, where he was Editor-in-Chief of The Yale Law Journal. Michael married Susan Daggett, a successful natural resources lawyer, in 1997. Michael and Susan are the proud parents of three daughters.

Josh Bernstein International explorer, photographer, author, and television host Josh Bernstein has traveled more than 500,000 miles by train, plane, bus, bike and camel to over 50 countries, exploring the biggest mysteries of our planet in pursuit of knowledge and discovery. Josh’s television career began in 2005, when he debuted as the host of a new adventure-archaeology series called Digging for the Truth on The History Channel. In 2007, Josh moved from The History Channel to Discovery Channel, where he has served as host and executive producer of Into The Unknown with Josh Bernstein. In addition to his work on television, Josh is also the president and CEO of BOSS, the Boulder Outdoor Survival School. Based in the small town of Boulder, Utah, BOSS is the oldest and largest wilderness survival school in the world. Born and raised in New York City, Josh has two degrees from Cornell University (BA, Anthropology & Psychology). After graduating college, he spent a year in a post-graduate program in Jerusalem studying, among other things, mysticism and ancient texts. Josh is a fellow of The Explorers Club and The Royal Geographical Society and a patron of the American Museum of Natural History. He sits on the Board of Trustees for the Global Heritage Fund and the Board of Directors for The Explorers Club. When not traveling, Josh splits his time between an apartment in New York City and a yurt in Southern Utah.

Kenny Broad Dr. Kenneth Broad is Director of the University of Miami’s Leonard and Jane Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy and an Associate Professor in the division of Marine Affairs and Policy and at UM’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. Additionally, he holds a joint appointment at Columbia University where he serves as Co-Director of the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions. Working around the globe, Dr. Broad has directed major interdisciplinary efforts to study diverse aspects of human and environmental interaction, including climate impacts and human perception, the use and misuse of scientific information, decision making under uncertainty, and ecosystem based management. Dr. Broad has participated in and led scientific and film expeditions to remote locations on several continents, including the exploration of one of the world's deepest caves in Mexico's Huautla Plateau. He recently led a National Geographic Society expedition to explore the underwater caves of the Bahamas, featured on PBS NOVA and in an upcoming issue of National Geographic Magazine.

Greg Carr For a man who made his fortune in the high-tech industry, Greg Carr spends an awful lot of time living in a tent. Carr, an Internews Network board member, spends about every other month living and working in a remote region of the war-torn East African country of Mozambique. In one of the largest privately funded environmental projects in Africa, Carr has committed to spend up to $40 million in a comprehensive, 20-year effort to restore a remarkable national park in the center of Mozambique. And he is taking a very hands-on approach, meeting regularly with villagers and tribal elders in the region. Encompassing over 125,000 square miles of savannas and wetlands, Gorongosa National Park once had the densest wildlife in all of Africa, and hosted more lions than any place in the world. After 16 years of civil war, this former international tourist destination is a shadow of its former self. "Gorongosa Park is a world treasure of biodiversity," says Carr. "Many of the thousands of species present have not yet been studied or named. Moreover, at one time Gorongosa had the largest density of lions in the world and we hope to restore those numbers."

Theo Colborn Theo Colborn is a Professor of Zoology at the University of Florida, Gainesville, and President of The Endocrine Disruption Exchange (TEDX), based in Paonia, Colorado. She is an environmental health analyst, and best known for her studies on the health effects of endocrine disrupting chemicals. Dr. Colborn has served on numerous advisory panels, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Science Advisory Board, the Ecosystem Health Committee of the International Joint Commission of the United States and Canada, the Science Management Committee of the Toxic Substances Research Initiative of Canada, the U.S. EPA Endocrine Disruptor Screening and Testing Advisory Committee, and the EPA Endocrine Disruption Methods and Validation Subcommittee. She has published and lectured extensively on the consequences of prenatal exposure to synthetic chemicals by the developing embryo and fetus in wildlife, laboratory animals, and humans. Over the years she established and directed the Wildlife and Contaminants Program at World Wildlife Fund US. In her retirement she has set up a non-profit, TEDX, to carry on the work of providing objective, technical information about endocrine disruption and related low-exposure hazards for academicians, policy makers, government employees, community-based and health support groups, public health authorities, physicians, the media, and individuals.

Tim DeChristopher During the last days of the Bush administration, DeChristopher put his liberty on the line by bidding nearly two million dollars that he did not have for drilling rights to pristine public lands near Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. His act of civil disobedience resulted in the BLM auction being declared null and void and the Obama administration has since removed the land from any future sale. DeChristopher now faces federal charges and a possibly lengthy incarceration.

Joslyn Doerge Joslyn Doerge was born and raised in the city of Chicago, where early on she developed a fascination by the magic of the creative arts. In high school she won several awards for her art including The Congressional Art Award and has had work hung in the halls of Congress. She attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she developed her skills in both multimedia and stained glass as well as a focus on scientific illustration. While attending SAIC, she was accepted to study at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in their advanced painting program. When she graduated her BFA show was one of five shows (out of 300 BFA shows) selected to receive honorable mention and be photographed in the “top Pick’s” section of The Art Institute of Chicago’s paper. Since graduating she has traveled extensively, exploring the art and culture of peoples around the world and integrating those experiences into her work. Joslyn has displayed her work in solo art shows in both Chicago and Telluride. She has most recently settled in San Francisco.

Lynsey Dyer Lynsey Dyer is an athlete with an art habit or an artist with a skiing habit, whichever it is, the two compliment each other nicely. As a professional skier residing in Jackson Hole, WY, Lynsey has made a name for herself staring in such films as Teton Gravity Research and Warren Miller for five years running. Her face and graceful skiing style have also seen plenty of action amongst the glassy pages of Men's Journal, Women's Health, Outside, Powder, and Freeskier to name a few. Her skiing background gives her illustrations a unique perspective that only a pure mountain lifestyle could offer. Determined to create a strong, unifying and inspiring place for the feminine in sport, her work depicts strong yet feminine characters in play with nature. With a bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design and Photography, Lynsey has balanced her ski career shooting weddings, events and portraiture. As an illustrator, Her designs can be seen on everything from skis to t-shirts, posters to web.

Gretel Ehrlich Gretel Ehrlich was born on a horse ranch near Santa Barbara, California and was educated at Bennington College and UCLA film school. She worked in film for ten years, then began writing fulltime in 1978 after the death of a loved one. She had been filming on a 250,000 acre sheep and cattle ranch in northern Wyoming at the time, and there she stayed. The book that resulted was THE SOLACE OF OPEN SPACES. Working on ranches by day, Ehrlich continued writing at night and in the slow seasons. Following books include SOLACE, HEART MOUNTAIN, and ISLANDS, THE UNIVERSE, AND HOME. 1991 was the year Ehrlich was hit by lightning while taking a walk on her ranch. She was hospitalized and severly debilitated for several years. She writes of the experience in her nationally bestselling memoir, A MATCH TO THE HEART. Having recovered from her lightning injuries, Ehrlich began traveling. In 1993, she went to the foothills of the Himalayas in western China. Intending to write a book on the four sacred Buddhist in China, she was so appalled by the stripping away of culture and humanity during the Cultural Revolution, that she found herself writing something altogether different, QUESTIONS OF HEAVEN. Ehrlich also began traveling north to Greenland. Eight years later, in 2002, her book, THIS COLD HEAVEN: Seven Seasons in Greenland, was published.

Mike Fay A National Geographic Society Explorer-in-Residence and Wildlife Conservation Society conservationist, Fay is best known for a 455-day, 2,000-mile trek across Africa known as the MegaTransect. Later he flew 70,000 miles at low altitude taking photographs every twenty seconds to record the impact of human activity on African wilderness. Most recently, he spent a year hiking through 700 miles of California’s Redwood forests, collecting data and documenting the state of the one-of-a-kind ecosystem.

Dave Foreman The founder of the environmental activist group, Earth First! and a leading proponent of protecting and restoring the earth’s wildness, Foreman is the author of Rewilding North America: A Vision for Conservaton in the 21st Century. The book examines the extinction crisis and the best strategy for addressing it. He also wrote Confessions of an Eco-Warrior.

Freedom Riders Freedom Riders Civil Rights activists rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States to test the United States Supreme Court decision Boynton v. Virginia (of 1960). The United States Supreme Court's decision in Boynton v. Virginia granted interstate travelers the legal right to disregard local segregation ordinances regarding interstate transportation facilities. But the Freedom Riders' rights were not enforced, and their actions were considered criminal acts throughout most of the South. For example, upon the Riders' arrival in Mississippi, their journey ended with imprisonment for exercising their legal rights in interstate travel, and similar arrests took place in other Southern cities. Freedom Riders knew that they faced arrest by authorities determined to stop their protests and possible mob violence, and, before starting, they committed themselves to a strategy of non-violent resistance. The riders borrowed this strategy from Gandhi, which had first been used in America by Martin Luther King Jr during the bus boycott in Montgomery.

Mel Goldstein, Ph.d. Dr. Goldstein is a social anthropologist specializing in Tibetan society, history and contemporary politics. His current projects include an oral history of Tibet; the impact of China’s reform policies on rural Tibetan nomads and farmers; and, the changing patterns of intergenerational relations in rural Tibet. Dr. Goldstein was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2009.

Anthony Holbrooke Carefully carved out of Colorado marble, Anthony Holbrooke’s sculptures were made expressly with Telluride in mind. His work lives in a wonderful space between abstraction and naturalism, allowing the viewer to bring their own sensibility and attitude to the work.

Stefan Hunt Stefan Hunt has now directed 2 award winning documentary films - 'Surfing 50 States' and 'Somewhere Near Tapachula' - He has also hosted 'ReachOut! TV' and won the 'Triple J 1 minute' and 'Get Shorty' film competitions. Not bad for a 22 year old Australian surf rat! While filming Somewhere Near Tapachula, he borrowed a friends SLR camera to capture the fun and games that went on 'behind the scenes'. Stefan spent a total of 3 months at Mision Mexico, a kids refuge located in Tapachula, Chiapas.

Charlotta Janssen Charlotta Janssen adopts big themes for her paintings, yet she makes the pieces work on a personal level. Her latest series is about the Freedom Riders who rode buses to Mississippi in 1961 at great personal peril (and who are featured in the film Freedom Riders). These mug-shot-style paintings offer a sense of the Riders’ personal courage.

Chris Jordan A former corporate lawyer, Jordan is dedicated to raising consciousness, through his photographic art, of the far-reaching and destructive consequences of our everyday habits. His most recent project, Midway – Message from the Gyre, focuses on the lifecycle of the albatross in the N. Pacific Ocean that confuses the vast pollution of trash in the water with food – with dire consequences.

Rabbi Irwin Kula Irwin Kula, the host of Simple Wisdom, is not your typical rabbi. Known as both a provocative religious leader and a respected spiritual iconoclast, Irwin Kula has inspired thousands nationwide using Jewish wisdom in ways that speak to modern life. A renowned thinker, teacher, and rabbi, he is the author of Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life. A leader of religious pluralism, Kula says that the "freedom and openness of America invites us to bring our traditions to the marketplace of ideas. The challenge is to translate these wisdoms into accessible American idioms that inspire and improve our personal and public lives." A regular on NBC-TV’s The Today Show, and co-host of the popular weekly radio show, Hirschfield and Kula: Intelligent Talk Radio, airing on KXL in Portland, OR - one of the top 25 markets nationwide, Kula offers a perspective often missing in the media.

Katie Lee Katie Lee is the grande dame of Western singers and environmentalists. She is an author, musicologist, folk singer, storyteller, actress, songwriter, filmmaker, photographer, activist, poet, and river runner. She is one of a handful of men and women who knew the 170 miles of Glen Canyon very well. She made sixteen trips down the river, even named some of the side canyons. Glen Canyon and the river that ran through it has changed her life, so it is not surprising that she has never gotten over her horror and disbelief at the destruction of this exquisite Eden drowned under 500 feet of Colorado River water behind Glen Canyon Dam.

Maya Lin Renowned sculptor and landscape artist, Lin is best known as creator of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., a public work she designed at age 21. Her recent work has focused on how we relate and respond to the environment and her most current project, What is Missing (to be featured at Mountainfilm), specifically addresses the alarming pace of biodiversity loss.

Thomas Lovejoy Dr. Lovejoy is chief biodiversity adviser to the president of the World Bank, senior adviser to the president of the United Nations Foundation and president of the Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment. Credited with first coining the term “biological diversity,” Lovejoy developed the debt-for-nature swaps that allow environmentalist investors to convert the foreign debt of developing countries into preservation of biologically sensitive tracts of land.

Prudence Mabhena Prudence Mabhena is Liyana's lead singer. She also composes in a wide range of styles and many topics. While challenges with Arthrogryphosis have placed her in a wheel chair, she is an independent, assertive woman, whose voice has been likened to the great South African liberation singer, Miriam Makeba.

VivianE Moos Viviane Moos is a photojournalist, documentary feature photographer and a fine artist. She has covered social and political issues and produced assignments for magazines all over the world. Her images have been exhibited internationally. Born of South American parents and raised in Europe, Viviane Moos has traveled the world in search of compelling stories to tell which she does with her camera and her passion for sharing the world as she sees it. The survival struggle in the world is her central theme; her feature projects include homeless street-gangs and prostitutes in Brazil; the French police dealing with domestic violence and juvenile delinquency in France and the rescue and rehabilitation of captive baby orangutans in Borneo, Indonesia. In her most recent black and white body of work she turns her attention to the survival struggle of the trees of Angkor, using infrared filters and slow shutter speeds to capture the otherworldly light and power of the trees.

Greg Mortenson Author, adventurer and activist Greg Mortenson will return to Mountainfilm in 2010. We’re looking forward to getting an update on his adventures since he last passed through Telluride. Greg’s latest book, Stones into Schools, was just published and has been getting great reviews.

Erika Nelson Erika Nelson’s license plate says “Art Car,” which describes this four-wheeled commentary on fossil fuel dependency and which is also carrying her curated museum exhibit: “The World’s Largest Collection of the Smallest Versions of the World’s Largest Things.”

Hilaree O'Neill Hilaree grew up skiing at Steven’s Pass in Washington state. She didn’t begin skiing competitively, however, until moving to Europe in her early twenties. She began with a few European extreme contests and derbies scattered throughout the Alps. After college graduation, Hilaree followed some friends to Chamonix, France, where she intended to spend the winter—a winter that turned out to be five years long. During this time, O’Neill slowly transformed from a lift-served skier to a big-mountain, backcountry ski mountaineer. She found she had what it took for extreme skiing: athletic abilities perfectly suited for the rigors of climbing as well as skiing and a spirit of adventure that would take her to faraway places and down many first descents.

Timmy O'Neill Timmy O'Neill is America's most outrageous climber. He has set "gob-smacking" speed climbing records from Yosemite to Patagonia, and has been at the cutting-edge of the sport for over 20 years. He is a world-class slackliner, renowned building solo climber, class 5+ kayaker and dangerously fast mountain biker.

Renan Ozturk Renan discovered his passion for climbing while attending Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colorado. As a member of the small community of climbers there, he honed his skills, deepened his connection to the sport of climbing and dreamed of the remote and beautiful places it could take him. Renan graduated with a degree in biology but not before traveling to Nepal to study the language and culture of a country to which he is still intimately connected. During the last three years Renan has spent multiple seasons climbing in Indian Creek, Yosemite, Joshua Tree, Squamish, and the Bugaboos. The stunning scenery of these locations serves as inspiration for Renan’s other passion, his artwork, which is creating as much of a buzz as his rock skills. Footage of Renan’s onsight solo of the 300-foot North Six Shooter tower in the Utah desert can be seen in the climbing film Return2Sender: Parallelojams.

George Packer A staff writer for The New Yorker, Packer is author of, among other titles, The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq, that analyzes the events that led to the 2003 U.S. invasion and subsequent developments, largely based on interviews with ordinary Iraqis. He has also written about atrocities in Sierra Leone, civil unrest in the Ivory Coast and global counterinsurgency. His latest book is Interesting Times: Writings from a Turbulent Decade.

James Prosek James Prosek’s paintings of invertebrates would be almost clinical if they weren’t so beautiful. Close ups of butterflies and other bugs are accompanied by notes from the painter, who is clearly a naturalist in the grand tradition.

Louie Psihoyos Louie Psihoyos has been widely regarded as one of the top photographers in the world. He was hired directly out of college to shoot for National Geographic and created images for the yellow-bordered magazine for 18 years. His ability to bring humanity and wit to complicated science stories carries over to his filmmaking. An ardent diver and dive photographer, he feels compelled to show the world the decline of our planet’s crucial resource, water. With Jim Clark, he created The Oceanic Preservation Society (OPS), in 2005. The non-profit organization provides an exclusive lens for the public and media to observe the beauty as well as the destruction of the oceans, while motivating change. With his first film, The Cove, which plays at Mountainfilm this year, he has touched many with his unflinching view of a dark subject.

Chris Rainier Chris Rainier’s mission is to put wilderness and indigenous cultures on film. He is a National Geographic Society Fellow, co-directs the National Geographic Society’s Cultural Ethnosphere Program and directs the All Roads Photography Program. He is a correspondent on photography for NPR’s Day to Day. His work is seen in Time, Life, Smithsonian, The New York Times, many National Geographic publications and in museums and galleries around the world. Chris was formerly on the Mountainfilm board of directors.

Rick Ridgeway A member of the first American team to summit K2, Ridgeway is one of the world’s foremost mountaineers and adventurers in addition to being an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, photographer and author. As vice president of the outdoor clothing, apparel and gear company, Patagonia, he is also active in many environmental issues and sustainability initiatives. He created the Freedom to Roam initiative, which seeks to create and maintain wildlife corridors in the midst of human development.

Joe Riis Joe Riis has assiduously photographed the migration of the pronghorn antelope by using camera traps and taking long sojourns into the wilderness. He is a National Geographic Young Explorer and works with Freedom to Roam to establish and preserve migratory corridors.

nicole rosmarino Nicole Rosmarino is a scientist with Wild Earth Guardians, which works to protect and preserve biodiversity in the American West.

terry root Terry Root is a scientist at Stanford University who studies the viability of species and populations. She is also a senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment.

Joel Sartore Much of Sartore’s 20-year career as a photographer has been with the National Geographic Society. His new book, Rare, is focused on America’s endangered species. A particularly entertaining speaker, he is a founding member of the iLCP.

Alexander Shulgin Shulgin is credited with the popularization of MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, especially for psychopharmaceutical use and the treatment of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. In subsequent years, Shulgin discovered, synthesized, and bioassayed over 230 psychoactive compounds. In 1991 and 1997, he and his wife Ann Shulgin authored the books PiHKAL and TiHKAL on the topic of psychoactive drugs.

SquidShow Theatre Telluride's own SquidShow Theatre was founded by Sasha Cuciniello in 2007. The company comprises of a talented group of creative, thoughtful and funny individuals who make it their goal to create exciting, challenging and original events. Company members collaborate to build new work with elements of music, dance, art and comedy. SquidShow will be creating an original work for Mountainfilm in Telluride, loosely based on the theme of extinction.

Wes Skiles Wes Skiles has been actively exploring, and filming unexplored frontiers around the planet for the past thirty years. He is best known for his camera work in both still photography and motion pictures. His passion is reflected in his award winning work as producer, director, cameraman on adventure science, exploration films for TV, IMAX, and the big screen. He is also a long time contract photographer for National Geographic Magazine.

John Vaillant John Vaillant’s first book was the national bestseller The Golden Spruce, which won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction in 2005. He is also a freelance magazine writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Geographic, Outside and The Walrus. In 2006, he was the recipient of a grant from the National Geographic Society Expeditions Council. His work in this and other fields has taken him to five continents and five oceans. Vaillant has homesteaded in Alaska; fished in the Bering Sea; sailed to Hawai’i; taught learning-disabled children; skied across the Beartooth Mountains; pursued vampires in Transylvania, giant crocodiles in India and tigers in Siberia; worked with juvenile delinquents; ridden a motorcycle powered by a Corvette engine; taken part in a Navajo peyote ceremony; swam with beluga whales in Hudson’s Bay and with sharks in the Florida Keys; participated in two homebirths; driven on the Arctic Ocean; cooked for a hundred people on a regular basis; mopped a thousand floors; played slide guitar and sung for money; crossed the Rockies on horseback; hopped trains; eaten whale, camel and polar bear meat; gotten drunk at a Romanian shepherds’ convention; used dynamite; and led workshops with people ranging from convicts to corporate executives on issues of race, gender and globalization. John's new book, The Tiger, will be coming out in August 2010. The Tiger is an extraordinary piece of nonfiction involving Siberian Tigers, a few men made desperate by the effects of Perestroika, and the terrifying encounters that result - all as a means of entry into some new intellectual territory.

Ed Viesturs Ed Viesturs is America's leading high altitude mountaineer, having climbed many of the world's most challenging summits, including ascending Mount Everest six times. He recently completed a 16-year quest to climb all 14 of the world's highest mountains (above 8,000 meters) without the use of supplemental oxygen. In doing so, he became the first American and the 5th person in the world to accomplish this. Viesturs was born in 1959 and grew up in the flatlands of Rockford, Illinois, where the highest objects on the horizon were water towers. After some beginner's rock climbing at Devil's Lake, Wisconsin, Viesturs left the Midwest for the University of Washington in 1977 and inaugurated a long-running obsession with the mountains.

Beth Wald In her photography, Beth Wald combines a lifelong love of the natural environment and a fascination with the world’s diverse cultures, passions that have led her on a wide-ranging visual exploration of how we as humans interact with the environment that surrounds us. Most recently, she has worked to document cultures and environments at risk, including the plight of the people and environment of Afghanistan. A recipient of the 2006 Rowell Award for the Art of Adventure, Beth Wald has done national and international assignments for many editorial clients, including National Geographic, Smithsonian, The New York Times, Outside and many others.

Peter Whittaker Co-owner of Rainier Mountaineering, Inc. (RMI), the largest guide service in the U.S., Peter has been a mountain guide for more than 25 years. Born into what could rightfully be called the First Family of American mountaineering, Peter has more than held his own outfitting and guiding over 70 expeditions on all seven continents. In 1995, he organized Expedition Inspiration and led a group of breast-cancer survivors to the summit of Aconcagua, raising $2.3 million for breast-cancer research. He has hosted Trailside, an Emmy-nominated adventure TV series on public television. And he continues to lead trips all over the world.

Jeff Zenick Jeff Zenick was born March 13th 1956 in Paris, France to American parents. As a youth in the late 1970's and early 1980's, he hitch-hiked around the country visiting communes and working doing agricultural labor. Much of his adult life he worked a series of odd jobs, restaurants, landscaping, construction and working out of labor pools while making his artwork. He is a self taught artist who participated in the zine culture of the 1990's; making numerous travel zines filled with drawings of urban landscapes and portraits drawn on location. The last 5 years, he has been drawing and painting from old yearbook photos fom the early 1900's to the present. He lives in Tallahasse, Florida with his wife Paula who owns a Yarn Shop.