Because it’s there – the Intelligence Squared Mountain Festival

15 June 6:30-9pm

Royal Geographical Society, London

www.iq2mountainfestival.com     

The Intelligence Squared Mountain Festival will play host to some of the world’s greatest climbers and mountaineers, including Kenton Cool, who just completed his 8^th summit of Everest and who guided Bonita Norris, the youngest British woman ever to climb to the top of the world.

The festival will seek to answer questions that the recent Everest season has raised.  The first team to summit Chomolungma (Nepal’s name for the peak) this season were two Sherpas who fixed the ropes and ladders to ensure the hundreds who followed had an easier climb to the top. Kenton’s client Bonita Norris fell on her descent and had to be carried down the mountain by two Sherpas and then helicoptered off the mountain with frostbite. Bonita had never climbed a mountain before training to climb Everest.   Our speaker Ed Douglas says Everest has become more resort than wilderness, with celebrities almost climbing over each other to wave the flag of their chosen charity at the top of the world.  Meanwhile this season a team of Sherpas brought down bodies of dead climbers who perished in Chomolungma’s ‘death zone’.  But should paid expeditions be banned from climbing these peaks?  The commercialization of Everest has also meant that some of the poorest communities in the world have a guaranteed income, schools and improved health.

Never before in London have we seen such a line-up of Everest giants.  The Mountain Festival will play host to a number of other world class climbers including Doug Scott, Stephen Venables and George Band. For these mountaineers, Everest is barely a notch on their long train of successful and daring climbs completed around the world without prefixed ropes or oxygen, and often done via routes that had never been previously attempted.  George Band was on the first successful Everest expedition with Edmund Hillary.  Doug Scott climbed the impossible South West Face bivouacking over 8000m. Stephen Venables summited  via the terrifying East face Alpine-style, alone.  Rebecca Stephens was the first British woman up Everest.  The debate is set to pit old against new, men against women and private versus commercial expedition. These polarized views will undoubtedly create the most passionate debate on the world’s most famous mountain.

The IQ2 Mountain Festival will be a one evening-only exploration of what mountains represent to humanity. From mountains’ place in literature to how they shape history, from providing sublime nourishment for the soul to fuelling mountaineers’ addiction to vertigo, the festival will combine the IQ2 tradition of debate and discussion with film, photography and literature. The festival is sponsored by The King’s Ginger, and all attendees will receive a free glass of King Edward VII’s favorite tipple. Tickets are £25 and available through the festival’s website: www.iq2mountainfestival.com Student discounts are available – enter the code ‘student’ for a 2:1 offer through the link provided on the website.

Speakers

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 by 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 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 8 times and to summit twice in a season, and on Cho Oyu made the first British ski descent of 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 Himalaya, 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, IFMGA 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, who climbed Everest with Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953.

Alexandre Buisse is an award winning mountain and adventure photographer. He was born in Lyon, France and frequent trips to the Alps kindled his love of climbing and mountain photography. Alexandre’s photos have been used by Black Diamond and the American Alpine Club. He has won numerous plaudits including awards by Sheffield Adventure Film Festival and Llanberis Mountain Film Festival. He took the picture which appears above - many thanks!

 “The authentic Englishman is one whose delight is to wander all day, amongst rocks and snow; and to come as near breaking his neck as his conscience will allow”   Leslie Stephen 1871

Picture credit: Alexandre Buisse