Brendan Leonard - BeWild 2016 Speaker Series

 BRENDAN LEONARD

Brendan has bicycled across America, ridden through the Grand Canyon on a raft and walked across it twice, and lived out of a converted van for three years, climbing and adventuring in the mountains around the West. Brendan is a writer, and the founder of semi-rad.com. Most of his work centers around adventure, travel, and human experiences with both of those. Brendan is also contributing editor at Climbing, Adventure Journal, and The Dirtbag Diaries. His stories have appeared in Backpacker, National Geographic Adventure, Outside, Men’s Journal, Sierra, Adventure Cyclist, and other publications.

Doors open at 6:00pm, presentation starts at 7:00pm

  2016 BeWild LINEUP 

•  April 15 - Sasha DiGiulian
• May 19 - Brendan Leonard
• June 2 - Libby Sauter
• June 22 - Jess Roskelley & Ben Erdmann

 LIBBY SAUTER

The 30-year-old nurse splits her time between saving children's lives with international NGO Novick Cardiac Alliance in some of the world's most dangerous places and climbing hard on some of the world's most challenging rock faces. In her downtime she enjoys playing on a "highline" - a thin piece of rope strung high above the valley floor. In 2014 she set the female speed record on The Nose, El Capitan with Mayan Smith-Gobat. She's even completed two routes of El Capitan in a day - most spend up to a few nights on the face making the challenging ascent.

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JESS ROSKELLeY & BEN ERDMAnN  

Washington native Jess Roskelley began his mountain climbing career at age 18 as a guide on Mount Rainier. By age 20, he had reached Rainier’s summit 35 times and was the youngest American to have reached the summit of Everest. Roskelley began dividing his time between working as a tank welder and pioneering new routes in the Alaska Range, where he met up with Alaska native Ben Erdmann. Ben, who came to alpinism by way of climbing frozen waterfalls, works with rigging systems as both passion and profession, and his ascents in Patagonia are marked by a continuous-movement style of alpinism, the endurance pushes. In 2013, Roskelley and Erdmann, along with partner Kris Szilas, established a first ascent on the East face of the Citadel (VI AI5+ M6+ 5.10R A3) in Alaska’s Kichatna Mountains in 70 hours camp-to-camp.

Today, Jess and Ben migrate, like birds, between the extreme poles of the Western Hemisphere, spending their winters in Patagonia and summers in Alaska, with occasional stopovers in the Cascades and the Rockies.

Jess and Ben will share highs and lows from their migratory life, from numerous successful summits of Fitz Roy and first ascents in both Alaska and Patagonia to starting their own rope access welding business, being roommates for life, and making sure the house is clean daily when Jess’s wife gets home from work. 

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