Speaker for June 25, 2012 - Conrad Anker - Mountaineer

Conrad Anker has made a specialty of climbing the most technically challenging terrain he can find. This search has taken him from the mountains of Alaska and Antarctica to the big walls of Patagonia and Baffin, to the massive peaks of the Himalaya, including the summit of Everest two times.

Conrad's Antarctic experience spans a decade, with first ascents in three regions. In 1997, Conrad teamed up with Alex Lowe and Jon Krakauer to climb Rakekniven, a 2,500 foot wall in Queen Maud Land. This incredibly remote  climb was covered by the National Geographic Society for both a magazine article and a documentary film.

In Patagonia, Conrad has climbed all three towers of the Cerro Torre group, including new routes on Torre Egger and Cerro Standhardt. In Pakistan's Karakorum Conrad climbed the west face of Latok II via the route "Tsering Mosong", which means long life in Balti. The route begins at the same height as the summit of Denali, climbs 26 pitches on a vertical cliff and then tops out at 23,342 feet. In 1998 Conrad and Peter Croft climbed Spansar Peak, a first ascent via a 7000 foot long ridge. The pair did the climb in a day with a minimal amount of equipment.

In May of 1999, as a member of the Mallory & Irvine Research expedition, Conrad discovered the body of George Mallory, the preeminent Everest explorer of the 1920s. The disappearance of Mallory and Irvine on their summit bid of June of 1924 is one of climbing's great mysteries. Conrad's discovery and analysis of the find has shed new light onto the pioneering climbs of the early expeditions. In conjunction with a feature film about the disappearance of George Mallory called “The Wildest Dream”, Conrad again reached the summit of Everest on June 14, 2007.

On October 2, 2011 - Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin and Renan Ozturk summited one of the last great unclimbed features of the Himalayas by topping out on the Shark’s Fin route on the northwest face of 20,700-foot Meru in the Garhwal Himalaya.  In the game of high-altitude, big-wall mountaineering, the previously unclimbed route represents one of the world’s ultimate mountaineering tests, with the lower third a classic alpine snow-and-ice route, the middle a mix of ice and rock, and the final section an extremely difficult, overhanging headwall. The Shark’s Fin has drawn many of the world’s top alpinists over the past 30 years, none of them able to finish the route.

Sponsored by The North Face and active in numerous charitable causes, Anker serves on the board of the Conservation Alliance, the Rowell Fund for Tibet and the Alex Lowe Charitable Foundation. “My involvement with these organizations is intrinsically rewarding,” Anker says “and it’s among the most important work I do. It feels good to be able to give back to our community of humans and to the natural world."