Tuesday, June 19
8:30am - 10:00am
Breakfast and Opening Keynote Address:
No Mountain Too High
John Amatt
Founder & President of
One Step Beyond WorldWide
John Amatt is Founder & President of One Step Beyond WorldWide and the Founder of the Banff Mountain Film Festival. John is renowned in the international mountaineering community for making the first ever climb of the "Vertical Mile" Troll Wall in Norway. He was leader of an early climbing expedition to Western China, which used camels to approach a 24,757-foot mountain before skiing to the summit, this being perhaps the highest peak in the world to have been ascended and descended entirely on skis. And more recently, he was the principal organizer and a leader of Canada's first successful expedition to the 29,035 foot summit of Mount Everest. His experience as a leader of an Everest team taught him about the danger of falling into the trap of complacency and the importance of always questioning the status quo in seeking new ways of succeeding in a rapidly changing world.