Our Festival Guests

BK Adams • I Am Art is an artist based out of Washington D.C. whose paintings and sculptures incorporate abundant bold colors and found objects, such as bicycles and chairs. Adams is prolific: His recent exhibit at the Smithsonian, titled “Exercise Your Mynd — BK  Adams I Am Art,” included more than 50 pieces. He usually wears paint-splattered clothes and iconic details. He says, “I’m into details. I’m into making a small detail big and living it big. Celebrating a small thing like a small moment. Those are the things that turn my world.”

A longtime guest of Mountainfilm, James Balog has previously spoken about his photographic work on animals and trees. His latest work, the “Extreme Ice Survey” (EIS), uses a series of time-lapse cameras to chronicle the rapid recession of glaciers around the world and is the focus of the film Chasing Ice. He has published many books and been on numerous television shows, including a NOVA special about EIS. He was also the subject of the film A Redwood Grows in Brooklyn.

According to Erik Boomer’s photography website “his ballsy approach to challenges on and off the river has earned him the title ‘The Honey Badger of Kayaking.’” It’s unclear if this moniker is self-ordained, but Boomer’s credentials as a risk-taking photographer are well documented: a 104-day circumnavigation of Canada’s Ellesmere Island on skis and sea kayak; a week embedded as a homeless person in Washington, D.C.; being honored as a finalist in the 2010 Red Bull Illume Photo Contest; and a nomination as a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year for the Ellesmere expedition. His photography has been featured in The New York Times and Outside magazine.

For more than three decades, Phil Borges has created memorable portraits of people in indigenous and tribal cultures. His mission is to heighten awareness of the issues faced by those in the developing world. Borges has had a particularly close and long-standing relationship with the country of Tibet, and his latest book, Tibet: Culture on the Edge, reflects his respect for both the country and its people. This work accurately captures the two great challenges that Tibet and its people face today: Chinese eradication of their way of life and climate change.

Dan Buettner wanted to understand why certain people in particular areas of the world lived longer, healthier and happier lives, so he traveled across the planet to get answers. The result is a best-selling book called The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest, which examines how people live and how lifestyle affects lifespan. The book focuses on four areas — Okinawa, Japan; Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica; Sardinia, Italy; and Loma Linda, California — and demonstrates that everyday factors were involved, such as food, friends and perspective. This first book led to an international profile for Buettner that resulted in repeat appearances on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and other television outlets. He is also a National Geographic Explorer and holds three Guinness World Records for long distance cycling.

Keith Campbell is an artist who paints live shows of jam band concerts. Whether his vantage point is from the audience or onstage, his colorful, vibrant paintings capture the vitality and energy of a band while it performs. He is the featured artist in the new documentary ScrambleVision.

Alex Chadwick is a radio reporter who worked for NPR for decades. He is best known at Mountainfilm for his film series Interviews Fifty Cents, which pair Chadwick with a guest who sits for an interview at a folding card table. At the end of the conversation, Chadwick reaches into a cigar box and pulls out two quarters, which he gives to the guest. Chadwick recently did a piece on environmental activist Tim DeChristopher.

From unclimbed alpine towers in Pakistan's Karakoram mountains, to the deserts of west Africa, Chin's passion for travel, climbing, skiing, exploration and photography have taken him on break-through expeditions around the world. He is considered one of the most versatile and sought-after expedition photographers today. His exploits include traversing the Chang Tang Plateau in northwestern Tibet with Rick Ridgeway, Conrad Anker and Galen Rowell; shooting video and still photography for National Geographic; and climbing Mount Everest with David Breashears and Ed Viesturs, while shooting documentary video and production stills for a feature Universal Studios film. In the fall of 2006, Chin made his second ascent of Mount Everest and skied from the summit for the first American ski descent.

More recently, he was featured in the award-winning film Samsara about his attempt — along with Conrad Anker and Renan Ozturk — to climb Meru, a deeply challenging and technical peak in India. The attempt fell short within sight of the summit, but the threesome returned in 2011 and made it to the top, an effort that is chronicled in the 2012 film House of Cards.

After a life-altering encounter with an elephant in 2007, Maria Coffey — along with her husband Dag Goering — set out to explore the world of these amazing giants and discovered the desperate situation the animals face both in captivity and the wild. Coffey has written 11 books, including Where the Mountain Casts Its Shadow, which won the Banff Mountain Literature Prize, and Explorers of the Infinite, which was endorsed by Oprah Winfrey. The couple are presently co-writing a book about their work with elephants.

Geralyn Dreyfous is a founder of the Impact Partners Film Fund, which has funded many documentaries. Besides producing several films, including the Academy-Award winning Born Into Brothels, she is a leader and innovator in philanthropic circles.

Paul Ehrlich has been a pioneer in alerting the public to the problems of overpopulation, and in raising issues of population, resources and the environment as matters of public policy. He was perhaps the first person to broach the topic in a broad context with his book The Population Bomb in 1968. His book — cowritten with wife Anne — has had a profound and lasting impact on the discourse on population growth. In his current work at the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford, Ehrlich, an entomologist, studies dynamics and genetics of butterflies. Another special interest of Ehrlich’s is cultural evolution, especially with respect to environmental ethics, and he is deeply involved in the Millennium Assessment of Human Behavior (MAHB).

Dan Eldon was a photographer and journalist who was 23 years old when he was killed in Mogadishu, Somalia, by an angry mob that stoned and beat him and three other journalists to death in 1993. He left behind a trove of journals and artwork that his family collated and curates to tell his story and inspire others to see the world and work toward humanitarian goals.

Dave Foreman is a leading environmentalist who founded the group Earth First!. Inspired by Edward Abbey, who he says was “a visionary, the greatest inspiration my generation of conservation activists in the West ever had,” Foreman has started the Rewilding Institute, which is dedicated to “the development and promotion of ideas and strategies to advance continental-scale conservation in North America and to combat the extinction crisis.” His recent book, Manswarm and the Killing of Wildlife, is about population issues and how population affects the extinction of species.

Dag Goering is a veterinarian who started the Elephant Earth Initiative with his wife, the author Maria Coffey. The organization was inspired by a trip to Rajastan, India, where Goering was present for the birth of a captive elephant’s baby, the first such event in more than a century there. Motivated by that moment, he and his wife have since worked to help elephants survive in an increasingly hostile world.

Eliza Griswold is an American writer and poet who has written for The New Yorker, Harper’s and The New York Times Magazine. Her second book, The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam, focuses on the countries along the latitudinal line where a tense mixture of Christians and Muslims live. She is a member of The New America Foundation and is now working on a book about fracking in America.

Daryl Hannah is an award-winning actress, director and producer with an extensive acting career. She’s known for her roles in such films as Splash and Kill Bill. Beyond her on-screen career, she’s also an environmental activist and a prominent voice for the environmental movement, which has included taking a stand for Tim Dechristopher at his Bidder 70 trial in Salt Lake City and being arrested in front of the White House as part of a 2011 sit-in to protest the proposed Keystone oil pipeline from Canada.

In his writing, Richard Heinberg often examines the urgent need to transition away from fossil fuels. A senior fellow in residence at the Post-Carbon Institute, his latest book is titled The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality, which looks at the limits of continued growth that will result from an eventual dearth of resources, especially carbon-based energy. His body of work includes ten books, but these are not merely cautionary tales — Heinberg’s work offers a hopeful and realistic way of living for a future that is just and sustainable.

A former corporate lawyer, Jordan is dedicated to raising consciousness through his photographic art of the far-reaching and destructive impact of our everyday habits. His widely lauded series “Running the Numbers” has been compared to the “Harper’s Index” of art, offering viewers a truer understanding of the cost of society’s consumption. His recent project, “Midway — Message from the Gyre,” focuses on the lifecycle of the albatross in the North Pacific Ocean. The birds confuse the vast pollution of trash in the water for food — with dire consequences.

Ben Knight is a filmmaker and Telluride local who was inspired to make films because of Mountainfilm in Telluride. He’s produced several documentaries about the sport of fishing that have reached far beyond the fishing community and won awards at festivals around the world. Red Gold focused on a proposed gold and copper mine at the headwaters of an indigenous salmon spawning ground in Alaska. The film had a real impact on the debate around the mine, rallying people to oppose the massive mining project that would have altered both the river’s ecosystem and a longtime way of life for the community. Knight, along with his producing partner Travis Rummel, runs Felt Soul Media, a documentary production company that is now creating a film, in conjunction with Patagonia, about removing dams in America and restoring free-flowing rivers. The project received a Mountainfilm Commitment Grant in 2011.

Katie Lee is the grande dame of Western singers and environmentalists. She’s also an author, musicologist, storyteller, actress, songwriter, filmmaker, photographer, activist, poet and river runner. Lee is one of a handful of men and women who knew the 170 miles of Glen Canyon well. She made 16 trips down the river and even named some of the side canyons. Glen Canyon, and the river that ran through it, changed her life, so it's not surprising that she never got over her horror at the destruction of this exquisite Eden drowned under 500 feet of Colorado River water behind Glen Canyon Dam.

Drew Ludwig balances the path of a photographer and expedition leader. He works as guide on some of the highest mountains in the world; heli-ski guides in Telluride, Colorado; and is a professional fine art and commercial photographer. He is also a speaker for Mountainfilm in Telluride on Tour. During August of 2010, Ludwig walked 120 miles from the Ninth Ward of New Orleans to the Gulf Of Mexico in Louisiana with a camera in hand. He hopes the resulting body of work will become a template for future projects incorporating the ideals of a SBO (social benefit organization) and the motivation of a solo walking photographer. Ludwig lives in Telluride between guiding and photo assignments, and his work is represented by the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art.

The former deputy director of the United Nations Population Fund, Purnima Mane is the newly appointed president and CEO of Pathfinder International, a public health organization dedicated to reproductive health, family planning, HIV/AIDS prevention and care, as well as women's and girl’s empowerment. Mane studied in India and has worked in the area of HIV/AIDS for more than a decade.

Bernadette McDonald had a nearly 20-year career as the head of the Banff Mountain Festivals before turning to writing full time in 2006. Her books have received top accolades, including being shortlisted for Boardman-Tasker Prize (Brotherhood of the Rope), receiving the ITAS prize for mountain literature and receiving the Kekoo Naoroji Award for mountain literature (both Brotherhood and her biography of Tomaz Humar). Other awards include the King Albert award from Switzerland, the Summit of Excellence Award, the Alberta Order of Excellence and being named an honorary member of the Himalaya Club of India. McDonald's newest book Freedom Climbers (Rocky Mountain Books, 2011) documents the history of a group of extraordinary Polish adventurers who emerged from under the blanket of oppression following the Second World War to become the worlds’ leading Himalayan climbers. Freedom Climbers has won three top prizes: Boardman Tasker Prize in the UK, Grand Prize at Banff Mountain Book Festival and American Alpine Club Literary award.

Sarah McNair Landry grew up on Canada’s Baffin Island in a famliy of polar explorers. Her mother was a National Geographic Explorer of the Year in 2006, and Landry was a nominee in 2008 with her brother Eric for their epic snowkite expedition across the Greenland Ice Sheet (a 1,500-mile journey — the equivalent of the distance between Boston and Miami). She continues to do ground-breaking arctic explorations and expeditions.

Raised in Colorado, Naylor has been involved in many field-level research projects around the world and has published widely on issues related to intensive crop production, aquaculture, biofuels and climate change.

Renan Ozturk 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 and dreamed of the remote and beautiful places it could take him. Ozturk graduated with a degree in biology, but not before traveling to Nepal to study the language and culture of a country to which he's still deeply connected.

Ozturk has developed into an extremely talented and prolific filmmaker with a growing list of credits, including the short films Towers of the Ennedi, Living the Dream and Samsara, which is about his 2008 attempt — along with Conrad Anker and Jimmy Chin — to climb Meru, an enormously challenging peak that has stymied many top-notch climbers. Samsara chronicles their attempt, which falls short within sight of the summit. The three alpinists went back to Meru — less than six months after a ski accident that fractured Ozturk's skull — and summitted, a story that is  featured in the 2012 film House of Cards.

James Prosek wrote his first book — Trout: An Illustrated History — at age 19 for the publisher Alfred A. Knopf. It featured 70 of his paintings of the North American fish. Since then, he’s written for National Geographic and The New York Times Magazine and co-founded, with Patagonia’s Yvon Chouinard, a conservation organization called World Trout that works to preserve coldwater habitats. Prosek recently published a book titled Eels: An Exploration, from New Zealand to the Sargasso or the World’s Most Amazing and Mysterious Fish and is working on another book about Atlantic fishes that are going extinct. He is the subject of the short documentary Picture the Leviathan.

Travis Rummel is a filmmaker and a partner with Ben Knight in Felt Soul Media, which makes documentaries. The duo is known for thoughtful and beautiful films about the sport of fishing, and they have gained attention at festivals worldwide. Red Gold focused on a proposed gold and copper mine at the headwaters of an indigenous salmon spawning ground in Alaska. The film had an enormous impact on the debate around the mine, rallying people to oppose the project that would have altered both the river’s ecosystem and a longtime way of life for the community. Rummel and Knight are now working on a film, in conjunction with Patagonia, about removing dams in America and restoring free-flowing rivers. The project received a Mountainfilm Commitment Grant in 2011.

Raised in Santa Cruz, California, Chris Sharma has been a professional climber for nearly half of his life, even though he didn’t start climbing until he was 12. He started at a climbing gym, won the Bouldering Nationals at 14, then, a year later, climbed the highest rated route in America (5.14c). Since then, his career has taken him around  the world, where he has sent one impossible route after another, including an unforgettable arch in Majorca, which is the subject of the award-winning film, King Lines.

Amy Silverman fell in love with photography as a teenager and studied it in college, but she ended up switching her focus to film along the way. She worked in New York as a union camera assistant for 10 years, shooting some documentaries while she was at it, before realizing that she wanted to get back to telling stories through stills. Today, she is the photo editor at Outside magazine, where she enjoys mapping out feature shoots, assigning cover photos, working with the art department, riding her road bike and living in living in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Rebecca Skinner is a photographer who started out with a grant from her university to visit Louisiana five years after Hurricane Katrina. A chance meeting with photographer James Balog inspired her to follow his footsteps back to Banda Aceh, Indonesia, where he’d gone after the tsunami there in 2004. She spent a month in Banda Aceh in 2011 to document the changes and growth that had happened since Balog’s visit. Her uncle is rock climber Todd Skinner, and he encouraged her to push her limits and explore the planet.

Sandra Steingraber is an ecologist, an author and, now, an activist. She writes a regular column for Orion magazine and has written several books, including her latest Raising Elijah which is about how to make sure one’s children navigate a world that is fraught with environmental dangers. She knows about this firsthand from another book she wrote, Living Downstream, which is about her own battle with cancer that was caused by toxins. (The book is also a documentary by the same name). Steingraber has also become a leading voice in the nation-wide battle about natural gas and fracking.

Shannon Switzer was moved to action after fellow surfers were sickened by polluted water in the San Diego area. With Jane Goodall and Sylvia Earle as heroes, she started documenting other environmental issues, focusing on freshwater conservation in the San Diego watershed. She was named a National Geographic Young Explorer and hopes her success in San Diego can be replicated nationally.

A graduate of Yale, Oxford and Harvard Medical School, Geoff Tabin is an ophthalmologist who has dedicated his life to curing people with preventable blindness through the The John A Moran Eye Center and Himalayan Cataract Project. He is also an accomplished mountaineer and was the fourth person in the world to climb all seven summits. Tabin’s book Blind Corners: Adventures on Seven Continents was described by Sir Edmund Hillary as "an astonishing mixture of wild adventure and the overcoming of formidable challenges."

Lel Tone is a professional skier, mountain bike racer and competitive stand up paddle boarder. Tone forecasts avalanche safety at Squaw Valley in California, guides for Chugach Heli Guides in Alaska and was recently featured in Warren Miller’s latest film “... Like There’s No Tomorrow,” in which she skied in India with Lynsey Dyer. Like Dyer, she is also an Eddie Bauer First Ascent-sponsored athlete.

In 2011, Jon Turk, then 65, and Eric Boomer, 26, circumnavigated Ellesmere Island, a 1,500-mile trip that earned the duo a nomination for Adventurer of the Year from National Geographic. According to Turk in a New York Times article about the expedition: “Something [Eric and I] bonded on was that we’re both pretty rare characters to commit to doing something like this with a complete stranger.” Turk’s rare character led him from college at Brown to such accomplishments as a 3,000-mile kayak passage from Japan to Alaska, an unsupported crossing of the western Gobi of Mongolia on a mountain bike and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Colorado. As a wandering author, he’s published three books in addition to co-authoring the first textbook on environmental science in the United States in 1971.

Anand Varma is a photographer based out of Berkeley, California (where he used to race mountain bikes), but he now spends much of his time in South America. He went to Patagonia for a National Geographic Young Explorer Grant to photograph and study the region’s wetlands, which he documented using a camera attached to a kite.

Scott Wallace is a writer whose book The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon's Las Uncontacted Tribes, chronicles an expedition into the land of a reclusive tribe in the deepest reaches of the Amazon. Wallace details the challenges the team faces as they track the Arrow People while trying to avoid contact. He first wrote about this experience for National Geographic, but and he’s also written for Harpers, The New York Times and Newsweek.