Pete McBride

Native Coloradan Pete McBride has spent two decades studying the world with a camera. An award-winning photographer, filmmaker, writer and public speaker, he is a Sony Artisan of Light and has traveled on assignment to more than 75 countries for the National Geographic Society, Smithsonian, USAID and many others. He has spoken on stages for TEDx, The World Economic Forum, Pixar, Nat Geo Live and more. His passion, combined with a profound belief in conservation, propelled him to spend over two years documenting his local river — the Colorado. McBride’s books The Grand Canyon: Between River and Rim and Seeing Silence both won National Outdoor Book Awards. His 2024 book The Colorado River: Chasing Water celebrates one of America’s most iconic rivers and warns against overuse and climate change. In 2014 McBride took a SUP down the Colorado River when a pulse of water brought the river to the ocean for the first time in almost 20 years, which he chronicled in Delta Dawn (Mountainfilm 2015). McBride is also the mastermind behind two other films: the first tells the story of traveling down the length of the Ganges river in the film Holy (un)Holy River (Mountainfilm 2016) and Martin’s Boat (Mountainfilm 2016), which pays tribute to the legendary Martin Litton, dory master of the Grand Canyon. McBride, along with author Kevin Fedarko, also completed a thru-hike of the Grand Canyon — a tremendous feat documented in his film, Into the Canyon(Mountainfilm 2019), which was nominated for an Emmy. His film Asking Less premiered at Mountainfilm 2024, and he is the director of Monumental Moment (Mountainfilm 2025)