The Aviemore Adventure Film Festival is set to return from 9 to 12 March this year hosting hosting a variety of
films, talks, workshops and outdoor events.
Mick Fowler
After a successful 2016 Festival, this year’s festival is even bigger than before, packed with a superb line-up of events for the outdoor enthusiast. For the first time outdoor activities and workshops will be included in the programme alongside the mainstay of inspiring talks from leading outdoor athletes and exhilarating film screenings from around the adventure world.
The Festival kicks off this year on Thursday 9th March, with a day dedicated to celebrating women in outdoor sport. Just one day after International Women’s Day, we are hosting an introduction to Ski Touring and Split Boarding Day at the Cairngorm Mountain Ski Resort, focusing on encouraging women to get more involved in these disciplines. This is followed in the evening, by a live music event at The Old Bridge Inn (in Aviemore), which will be dedicated to fundraising for the festival’s chosen charity, The Speyside Trust, with Live Music from The Miss’s and The Bevvy Sisters.
The festival truly kicks off on Friday 10 th March, with an opening film and lecture session entitled: “The Adventure Session” where we will be joined by long distance cyclist and adventurer – Emily Chappell. Emily worked in London as a cycle courier for many years but decided instead to follow her dreams and travel the world…on her bike! Her lecture: “From Wales to Japan and all the places in between” follows her incredible journeys across the world on two wheels including cycling across Asia from her home in Wales to Japan over the space of 2 years; cycling the entire Pacific Northwest of America (from Anchorage to Seattle) in winter; and taking part in the Transcontinental Race – a 4000km race across the mountains from Belgium all the way to Turkey- and generally recognised as the toughest ultra-endurance cycling race in the world.
Emily Chappell
The morning of Saturday 11th will be devoted to taster sessions in various outdoor activities, gear testing sessions and some skills workshops including expedition planning and adventure film-making.
The festival will also be showing a selection of the best adventure films released in the past 12 months including inspiring films such as “Dodo’s Delight” from the acclaimed Reel Rock movie series following a team heading to Greenland to tackle new ascents on huge granite towers of rock, without support or rescue, but with lots of enthusiasm and humour. Also part of this year’s film line-up is the Scottish film “Tuesdays”, following a group of backcountry skiers through a winter season of skiing some of the toughest and boldest off piste gullies and mountains Scotland has to offer – featuring renowned backcountry skiers Hamish Frost and Pete Mackenzie.
The Saturday evening speaker will be Cedar Wright, one of the world’s most recognized professional climbers who has travelled the world establishing numerous adventurous and daring first ascents, often documenting these exploits through his writing and his impressive adventure film making skills. At the festival, Cedar will be sharing his hilarious & infectious desire for adventures, how he fell into becoming an outdoor climber and adventurer and will also be talking about his recent adventures, including travelling to Kenya with Alex Honnold to open up new rock climbing routes there, for the first time.
Following Cedar’s talk on Saturday night, the festival will be hosting its first ever Festival Party at the Old Bridge Inn in Aviemore.
Sunday continues with taster and gear testing sessions and more films including “A Line in the Snow” following a group of four British Skiers as they set off on an expedition to the wild coastline of East Greenland, with a plan to climb and ski new routes in these spectacular mountains.
Following that up, we have a special Q and A Session titled “How to Become an Adventurer?” with our guest stars at the festival giving advice on how to make adventure aspirations a reality, and explaining how they first started out on their paths to becoming full time adventurers/outdoor sports athletes. This will be followed by a kayaking and watersports session in the afternoon led by Justine Curgenven.
The final event is a talk by Mick Fowler, author, mountaineer and three time Pilot d’Or winner Mick Fowler. Mick has been a leading figure in the climbing world for 40 years. In the UK he is reknowned as a leading adventure climber with numerous ground breaking first ascents on chalk, shale, London drainpipes and other cliffs not previously viewed as suitable for climbing. Throughout the 1980s and 90s he was a leading pioneer of Scottish winter climbing, his record being 11 consecutive weekends from London. He was the first ascentionist of the first Scottish winter climb to be graded VI and some of the first rock climbs in the UK to be graded E6.
In mountaineering terms he has been a regular expedition climber since 1982, specialising in technically challenging, eye catching lines on peaks between 6000m and 7000m. His first ascents now include celebrated lines in Peru, India, Yukon, Tibet, Xinjiang, Sichuan, Nepal, Russia and Pakistan.
He was voted the Mountaineers’ Mountaineer in the Observer newspaper, has won three Piolet d’Or awards (the Oscars of the mountaineering world) and was awarded the King Albert Medal for mountain achievement in 2012. He has written two books about his climbs and won several literary awards including the John Whyte Award at the Banff Mountain Festival in Canada, the Best Book prize at the Bormio Mountain Festival in Italy and the Grand Prix at the Passy Book Festival in France.
Mick will be talking about his reunion with Victor Saunders and their first ascent of the north buttress of Sersank (6,050m) 29 years after their last Himalayan climb together on the Golden Pillar of Spantik in 1987. Sersank lies in the remote Pangi Valley area of the Indian Himalaya. With only a vague idea of what the face might be like Mick and Vic could only hope that their instinct was right and it would present the kind of adventurous challenge they were looking for.
Tickets for this year’s festival are on sale now with Individual Session Tickets start from £9 (adults) £7 (students/concessions) with Full Weekend Passes £46. Children under 12 go FREE (if accompanied by an adult). Full programme listings and tickets are available at the festival website.
The festival is community run and not-for- profit, and proceeds from this year’s festival will be going to support our chosen charity: Venture Trust.