Banff Mountain Book Festival 2006

Thursday, November 2, 1:30 – 2:40 p.m.: Strange and Dangerous Dreams

Friday, November 3, 10:30 – 11:40 a.m.: Voices of Adventure Interview with Audrey Salkeld

Max Bell Auditorium

Geoff Powter

Geoff Powter is uniquely qualified as an expert on adventure and risk. An accomplished climber with many notable ascents in North America and a veteran of 13 expeditions, he is personally acquainted with the roles that risk and fear play in the pursuit of mountaineering and extreme sport endeavours. He is also a clinical psychologist with a practice in Canmore, Canada. His clients include devotees of high-risk sports, and their families, who encounter the impacts of both fear and loss.

“More often than is commonly seen, there is a dark side to the pursuit of adventure,” says Powter, “times when mountains, poles, and oceans become nothing but an incidental stage on which to which to act out a troubled psychodrama.” In Banff, Powter will be speaking about his new book, Strange and Dangerous Dreams: Journeys Along the Fine Line Between Adventure and Madness (September 2006), which explores surprising stories of 11 adventurers. Among the flawed heroes with tragic ends examined in his book are explorers Meriwether Lewis and Robert Falcon Scott, aviator Jean Batten, and mountaineers Aleister Crowley and Claudio Corti.

On Friday, November 3, Geoff will interview Audrey Salkeld in the Voices of Adventure interview.

Powter has also been the editor of the annual Canadian Alpine Journal since 1993 and has been a frequent contributor to adventure magazines including Explore, Hooked on the
Outdoors, Climbing, and Rock & Ice. His mountain writing won him a National Magazine Award in 2002. He has also appeared on CBC Radio and television, ABC-TV’s “Nightline” and USA Today TV, discussing the psychology of risk.

In each of these stories, darkness of some kind — ambition, ego, a thirst for redemption, the need to please others — carried these characters in a perilous direction. In the end, understanding these difficult but utterly human stories helps us comprehend the deepest purpose and allure of adventure, and, ultimately, to more honestly measure ourselves.

— Geoff Powter, from Strange and Dangerous Dreams

 

Anyone who has hiked even modestly in the mountains or anywhere else knows how alluring the exploits of extreme adventurers are — how brave and compelling, and also how insane and reckless they seem. Why do they do these often-deadly deeds? Geoff Powter — a climber, a psychologist, and a terrific writer to boot — has finally come up with some satisfying answers.

— Ian Brown, columnist, Globe and Mail, and host, “Talking Books,” CBC 1