Sharon Wood made history in 1986 when she became the first woman from North America to climb Mount Everest. Her Canadian team’s unsupported ascent of the difficult West Ridge was a first from the Tibetan side, and despite several attempts since, their route has never been repeated.

Sharon’s epic story of her small team prevailing over extreme conditions and seemingly impossible odds catapulted her into a professional speaking career. Mount Everest is by no means Sharon’s first or last mountain. The certified Alpine Guide has four decades of experience climbing throughout the mountain ranges of the world, which include ascents of the South Face of Aconcagua, the Cassin Ridge on Denali, and a new route on Northeast Face of Huascaran Sur: the Southern Cross.

Sharon considers her achievement on Everest a stepping-stone to her greatest accomplishments: raising two high-spirited sons, her involvement as co-founder and president of a fully accredited school in her community, and author of a memoir titled Rising, published this fall by Mountaineers Books in the US and Douglas & McIntyre in Canada.  

Sharon resides with her husband in Canmore, Alberta and divides her time between guiding, inspirational speaking and enjoying an active mountain lifestyle.

Tyrolian Reinhold Messner is one of the most prolific mountaineers of this generation. He was the first person to climb Mt. Everest solo and along with Peter Habeler was the first to summit without the use of supplemental oxygen. He was the first mountaineer to complete ascents of all fourteen 8,000 metre peaks without supplemental oxygen, a feat that took him 16 years to complete. He is also known for the first ascent of the difficult Rupal Face of Nanga Parbat where tragically his brother died on the descent. In 1989, he completed a 2,800 km overland crossing of Antarctica on skis and fifteen years later succeeded on a 2,000 km journey across the Gobi Desert on foot. He has written more than 75 books, and in 2006 he established a museum committed entirely to mountains and mountain culture. More recently Messner has turned his hand to filmmaking. Still Alive, a documentary about an extraordinary rescue on Mt. Kenya was screened at the 2017 Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival. The Great Peak: 150 Years Climbing History, is his latest film.

Geoff Powter has been a long-time fixture in the Alberta and Canadian climbing scenes. He was editor of the Canadian Alpine Journal from 1993-2007, and has written extensively about adventure for much of his life in the outdoors. Geoff has been published in magazines around the globe, and has won 14 National Magazine Awards, and his book, Strange and Dangerous Dreams: The Fine Line Between Adventure and Madness, won the Jury Prize at the 2006 Banff Mountain Book Festival. Geoff has also been the host of the Voices of Adventure interview series, held every year at the festival since 2000. Geoff has climbed around the world, with 13 Himalaya expeditions under his belt, and with nearly 50 first ascents to his name in the Rockies. Geoff’s latest book is Inner Ranges, published by Rocky Mountain Books (2018).