Saturday, November 3, 2001

Mountain Culture at The Banff Centre announced today its programs for Banff Mountain Summit 2002 — Extreme Landscape: Challenge and Celebration, a special three-day event that will be held from October 27 to 29 next year. Sponsored by National Geographic Society, the Summit — along with the 2002 Banff Mountain Book and Film Festivals — will be the premier mountain culture event of 2002, a year that the United Nations has declared as the International Year of the Mountains.

"The Summit will explore how extreme landscapes shape people's lives and how people impact extreme landscape," says Bernadette McDonald, vice-president, Mountain Culture, The Banff Centre. The event will include respected mountain authors, scientists, dancers, musicians, anthropologists and filmmakers. "Each Summit guest has a passion for mountain places and has translated that passion into creative endeavours, environmental and scientific research, and critical thinking," McDonald notes. The event will be also be part of Parks Canada’s nation-wide initiative to mark IYM.

Speakers at the Summit will include award-winning author Gretel Ehrlich, mountaineer, author and parliamentarian Reinhold Messner, author and ethnobotanist Wade Davis, specialist on sacred mountains Edwin Bernbaum, cultural photographer Chris Rainier, Canadian poet and singer Sid Marty, climber and founder of Patagonia Yvon Chouinard, adventurer Will Gadd, leading authority on international peace parks Jim Thorsell and conservationist George Schaller.

Banff Mountain Summit 2002 will include a symposium, slide shows, lectures, exhibitions, films, vertical dance performances and panel discussions on the following themes:

• Tribes — The Culture of Mountain Communities

• Eat the View — Consumerism of Landscape

• Mountains of the Brain — The Psychology of Extreme Landscape

• Adventure Capitalists — Corporate Responsibility

• Mountains of Inspiration — Art and the Interpretation of Extreme Landscape

Exhibitions by artists and photographers inspired by extreme mountain landscapes will also be showcased at Banff Mountain Summit 2002. Artists such as Alaskan photographer Bradford Washburn, British multi-media artist Andy Parkin, cultural photographer Chris Rainier and French painter Jean-Georges Inca will be presented at public galleries throughout Banff. In addition, acclaimed environmental architect William A. McDonough will present his Banff project in progress.

Mountain Culture at The Banff Centre’s involvement in International Year of the Mountains begins next month. The exhibit Climbers to the Edges of the World: Portraits from The Summit, produced by Mountain Culture in partnership with the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, will be part of the official launch of the IYM on December 19^th at the United Nations in New York. The exhibit features portraits of 32 mountaineers and adventurers who participated in the first Banff Mountain Summit in October 2000.