Bergans Athlete Cecilie Skog to Speak at Banff Mountain Festival
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Bergans Athlete Cecilie Skog to Speak at Banff Mountain Festival
Skog’s “To The Ends of The Earth” presentation to highlight her accomplishments as the first woman to complete the explorers’ “grand slam”
LONGMONT, Colo. – October 31, 2013 – Bergans of Norway athlete Cecilie Skog will be speaking this weekend at the Banff Mountain Film Festival about her adventures as the first woman to complete the explorers’ “grand slam” of standing on both poles and on the tallest peaks of all seven continents.
November 2, starting at 8 p.m. in the Eric Harvie Theatre, the festival’s main venue, Skog will kickoff Saturday night’s film event with “To the Ends of the Earth,” a presentation about her life as a mountaineer and adventurer.
Tickets for seats in the Eric Harvie Theatre are sold out, but seats are still available in the overflow Margaret Greenham Theatre, where Skog’s presentation will be simulcast.
In last Saturday’s Opening Night film, “The Summit,” Skog related the story of the tragic 2008 K2 expedition. Skog summited K2, climbing with her husband and partner-in-adventure Rolf Bae, who had turned back just before the peak and waited for her. Rejoining her on the descent, Bae was swept away in an avalanche, perishing that day along with 10 other mountaineers in one of the biggest tragedies to ever to occur on K2.
In 2010, Skog and Ryan Waters, another Bergans athlete, completed an unprecedented, unassisted 70-day 1800 km ski journey across Antarctica, making her the only woman in the world to have accomplished such a feat in addition to her “grand slam.”
Skog is a pivotal athlete for Bergans and even has her own signature line within the Bergans offerings. She joins a list of explorers using Bergans equipment that includes the first conqueror of the South Pole, Roald Amundsen, Everest pioneer Sir Edmund Hillary, who used Bergans frames to transport oxygen bottles, and most recently Polar explorer John Huston who used Bergans equipment to circumnavigate Canada’s Ellesmere Island during his 2012 New Land Expedition.
Bergans is also a sponsor of the Banff Mountain Film Festival’s 9th Annual Radical Reels Tour, a traveling film festival of the best high-adrenaline films from Banff’s 2012 festival, which concludes this fall.
For more information about Cecilie Skog, go to bergans.eu/team-bergans and for more information about Bergans of Norway, go to www.bergans.com.
The Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival is held October 26 to November 3, 2013. For more information about the festival, go to www.banffcentre.ca/mountainfestival.
Link to 2012/13 Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour trailer:bit.ly/1clU75g
Link to “The Summit” trailer:bit.ly/Hfh2EU
Link to 9th Annual Radical Reels Tour trailer:bit.ly/18D5BgE
About Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival
Created 38 years ago, the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival has become the premier event of its kind in the world. The Festival showcases the world’s best films, books and photographs on mountain subjects – climbing, culture, environment and natural history, exploration and adventure, wildlife, and sport – and attracts the biggest names in mountaineering, adventure filmmaking, and extreme sports as presenters and speakers. More than 80 films will screen during the nine-day festival, and an international jury will award over $50,000 in prizes. For more information, visit www.banffmountainfestival.ca.
About Bergans of Norway
Bergans was established in 1908, when Ole Ferdinand Bergan invented the first anatomical backpack. Today backpacks, functional outdoor clothing and tents are part of the portfolio of Bergans of Norway, as well as the ALLY brand of packable canoes. Adventurers such as South Pole conqueror Roald Amundsen, Mount Everest pioneer Sir Edmund Hillary, and heroes of our time such as Polar explorers Rune Gjeldnes or Cecilie Skog trust Bergans equipment on their expeditions.
The headquarter of Bergans Fritid AS is situated in Hokksund, Norway, 60 km southwest of Oslo, where 90-plus employees work in development, research, design and sales. Bergans is a market leader in Norway and steadily growing in several export markets in Europe and North America (www.bergans.com).
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MEDIA CONTACTS:
Bergans USA, LLC
Chip Smith, o: 801.656.0472 x1, c: 801.597.7515, csmith@soarcomm.com
Beth Cochran, c: 406.579.7909, cochran@whatsuppr.com
Bergans of Norway
Christoph Centmayer, o: +47-40 62 40 99, christoph.centmayer@bergans.no
