Irish Adventurer of the Year Awards 2019
Dillon Lynch
Saturday 24th | 1pm - 2:30pm
Would an 11 year old taking part in High Point Ireland's 10,000m Challenge to fundraise for Barretstown be "an unusual and exciting or daring experience" ?YES IT WOULD!!! In 2018 Dillon went on to triple the 10,000m total while completing over 70 unique highpoints around Ireland, often completing more than one per adventure and even completing 6 on one outing. On top of this Dillon writes about all the adventures on his own Blog while he sells advertising space on the blog to aid with the fundraising. Dillon also completed the 10,000m Challenge in 2017 in aid of Mountain Rescue Ireland while the previous year Dillon became the youngest person to climb to the highest point of the 32 Counties of Ireland while documenting that challenge on
dillons32chpchallenge.github.io/progress/index and fundraising for his Karate club and a local youth group that year. More information on the links I have given above but Kieron Gribbon's websites highpointireland.com and theirelandwalkingguide.com are the home of the 10,000m challenge and many other initiatives to get people outdoors and are a great reference for the outdoors. Initiatives other than the 10,000m challenge that keep Dillon interested are, Ireland High Points Week and the many lists and sub lists on Kieron's websites.
Dillon will be signing up again for 2019 and plans are been made already for another great year.
Check out the Blog on dillonsadventures.weebly.com and see all the adventures and pictures for yourself.
Film Progamme 2 | 3:30pm - 5pm
Magnetic Mountains
Saturday 24th | 3:30pm - 5pm
Described by Sir Chris Bonington as "fascinating and very moving", Magnetic Mountains is an independent documentary that follows the story of an everyman who, after falling from an Alpine north face, is struggling to find a balance. Featuring some of the biggest names in mountain sports, it will explore the psychology of risk taking in the mountains, asking – is it really worth it?
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​With the ascent of a mountain comes a descent into the depth of a human soul. This story is, above all, a love letter...
Festival Favourite's (part 1) | 7:30pm - 10:30pm*
*Includes intermissions & 'entertainment'
One Breath: A Life Without Gravity
(6 mins)
Saturday 24th | 7:30pm - 10:30pm
An immersive insight into the life of freedivers Eusebio and Christina Saenz De Santamaria as they attempt to set a new world record.
Director: Sebastian Solberg
Dream Ride 2.0
(5 mins)
Saturday 24th | 7:30pm - 10:30pm
Step into a dream world were the trails never end. DreamRide 2 is the follow up sequel to last years award winning short film,
DreamRide. Combining a Dr.Suess inspired narrative, mind blowing natural landscapes, and one dreamer on a mountain bike, this film will take you on an adventure like no other.
Director: Michael Hopkins
Director: Adam Clark
Follow Through
(22 mins)
Saturday 24th | 7:30pm - 10:30pm
People have opinions about skier Caroline Gleich: Inspirational. Gumby. Social media star. Role model. Model masquerading as a mountaineer. At sixteen, she stumbled upon a copy of the cult classic guidebook The Chuting Gallery. Irreverent and wonderfully arbitrary, the guidebook lays out a set of 88 ski mountaineering lines across Utah’s Wasatch Mountains. They were difficult and dangerous. When she first said out loud she wanted to ski them, she was met with laughter. “Maybe it was because I was five feet tall, or I was a little blonde girl, but I remember that clearly — and it didn’t feel good” says Gleich. After a decade building her skills, Gleich set out to complete her vision and become the skier she dreamt of being. 'Follow Through' is a story of loss, belonging and desire for respect. In this age of hyperconnectivity, which voices do we choose to hear and which do we ignore?
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The Frozen Road
(24 mins)
Saturday 24th | 7:30pm - 10:30pm
Shot and edited whilst cycling around the world, this short film charts my winter journey into the Canadian Arctic as I completed my bike ride up the American continent. Compelled by Jack London’s assertion, that ‘any man who is a man can travel alone’, I sought an adventure of perfect solitude. Yet, as I came to realise, the harsh truths of travelling in such a formidable environment were a long way from the romanticisms of Jack London’s descriptions. The Frozen Road is an honest reflection on my solo trip; of the wonder, terror and frustration I experienced when riding through the unforgiving emptiness of one of the world's 'last great wildernesses'.
Director: Cedar Wright & Taylor Keating
Director: Ben Page
Stumped
(25 mins)
Saturday 24th | 7:30pm - 10:30pm
​“I don’t want to be known as just a one-armed climber,” says Maureen Beck, “I just want to be a good climber.” Maureen Beck may have been born missing her lower left arm, but that hasn’t stopped her from going hard. She takes whippers on 5.12 and crushes overhanging boulders, while shot-gunning beers. But she is not here to be your inspiration. “People say, ‘Look, a one-armed climber, now I have no excuses.’ I’m like, dude, you never had any excuses in the first place.” Maureen is here to crush the gnar — with one bloody stump helping her get to the top.
Sea Gypsies: The Far Side of the World
(77 mins)
Saturday 24th | 7:30pm - 10:30pm
The vessel is Infinity, a 120 ft hand-built gypsy boat, crewed by a band of miscreants. The journey, an 8,000 mile pacific crossing, from New Zealand to Patagonia, with a stop in Antarctica. Unlike all the other boats heading to Antarctica though, Infinity is no well-financed, ice-reinforced super yacht, crewed by well-paid professional sailors, with carefully thought out agendas. Infinity lives in the moment and sails on a whim, without permission or insurance of any kind. What can to be found in abundance onboard, is blood, sweat, enthusiasm, disdain for authority and an ample supply of alcohol, a mad voyage of reckless adventure just for the thrill of it. Along the way the crew will battle a force 12 hurricane of ice in the Ross Sea, assist the radical environmental group Sea Shepherd in their fight with Japanese whalers, tear every sail they have and unwittingly go further south than any other sailing vessel in 2014. Underlying the dramatic sailing adventure, is the quest for awe and sense of wonder with the raw power of the natural world. The story touches on environmental activism themes, a rapidly diminishing ecosystem and raw adventure, not reserved for the elite.
Director: Nico Edwards
Sunday 25th February
Film Progamme 3 |12:30pm - 2pm
Sky's The Limit
(20 mins)
Sunday 25th | 12:30pm - 2:00pm
One woman (Cal Major)'s solo circumnavigation of the Isle of Skye, Scotland, on a Stand up Paddleboard. The adventure serves to highlight the effects of plastic pollution on even stunning, remote and wild places such as this, and brings positive and engaging solutions to the issue. The film follows Cal's epic and dramatic ocean voyage, vulnerable to Scotland's famous winds, waves and tidal races, alone. Featuring beautiful scenery, wildlife, farm animals and Tunnocks teacakes.
Director Biography
Director: James Appleton & Cal Major
The Ocean Rider
(67 mins)
Sunday 25th | 12:30pm - 2:00pm
​French-Swiss sailor Yvan Bourgnon - a pillar of the offshore race and winner of the Jacques Vabre transatlantic race - is making a mad bet: to complete the first round-the-world tour, alone, on a catamaran without cockpit, a boat the size of a beach sailboat. 220 days and 55'000km at sea, without being able to shelter from the elements. A tightrope walker, alone with his camera, he confronts a shipwreck, storms, pirates, the cold, the heat, but also enjoys innumerable moments of happiness and success. An immersion in a long and difficult adventure that Yvan Bourgnon, like an artist, makes accessible, comfortable, almost poetic. An adventure that also highlights the worrying issue of pollution and the preservation of the oceans, a cause for which Yvan Bourgnon is now actively involved, with his project The Sea Cleaners.
Director: Sébastien Devrient
Festival Favourite's (part 2)
Sunday 25th | 5pm - 7:15pm
Mira
(42 mins)
Sunday 25th | 5pm - 7:15pm
Mira' follows the journey of a spirited Nepali village girl on her pursuit to being a world-recognised mountain runner. Growing up in a remote mountain village in Nepal, Mira always dreamed of being successful in sport despite all the challenges that she & other Nepali girls face. After running away from home, Mira joined the Maoist army until as a young adult, she travelled the long distance to Kathmandu to try her luck. Out of money, she was about to return home to her village, when by chance on a morning run, she meets another runner who tells her about a long running race in the local hills. She wins it and soon begins to realise her tough mountain village upbringing has prepared her perfectly for this sport.
Director: Lloyd Belcher
Luang Ri
(18 mins)
Sunday 25th | 5pm - 7:15pm
The Austrian alpinist David Lama and his family have come to Nepal to see the green valleys and the little village where his father grew up. But for David it's not the only reason to return to Nepal. Accompanied by American alpine legend Conrad Anker, the plan is to conquer the unclimbed peak of Lunag Ri (6907m).
Director: Joachim Hellinger, Hans-Peter Stauber and Christian Schmidt
​Chasing Wild: Journey Into The Sacred Headwaters
(13 mins)
Sunday 25th | 5pm - 7:15pm
Three friends set off on a 400km bikepacking and packraft expedition through the heart of the sacred headwaters in northwestern British Columbia, birthplace of three critical salmon rivers, and home to the Tahltan people. In the wake of the devastating Mount Polley Mine disaster, the team’s goal is to understand what is at stake as a wave of new mines are developed across this remote corner of the province. Their journey offers an exciting and sobering window into this wild landscape as they pedal through vast boreal forest, paddle through frigid whitewater, catch monster trout, outrun a hungry grizzly, learn about the Tahltan’s fight to protect their homeland and glimpse inside a massive open pit mine.
Director: Tyler Wilkinson-Ray, Vasu Sojitra, Colin Arisman & Luke Kantola
Ya Mas - Snowmads in Greece
(20 mins)
Sunday 25th | 5pm - 7:15pm
In January 2017 big mountain skier and adventurer Fabian Lentsch and his Snowmads Truck hit the road and headed to Greece, straight into the winter of the century in this Mediterranean country!
In the new NINE&ONE production "Ya Mas - Snowmads in Greece" Fabian together with the Snowmads-crew once again reveals new paths and scores spectacular skiing lines in regions that don't appear on any freeride map yet. Deep powder in Parnassos, surfing in Crete, lines in Kalavrita and conquering Mount Olympus: the Snowmads exploit the full potential of vanlife travelling in the land of the gods and dive into one of the most ancient cultures we know.
Director: Marco Freudenreich, Fabian Lentsch & Karin Lechner
The Boulder Project
(15 mins)
Sunday 25th | 5pm - 7:15pm
We are a bunch of climbers living at the furthest point in the UK from natural rocks, mountains, and climbable coastline... So we thought we'd do something about it.
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We designed and built our own personal boulder - Planted it in the woods, and got all our friends down for a session at our own home mage crag
Director: Phil Feeney
Choices
(21 mins)
Sunday 25th | 5pm - 7:15pm
Steph Davis chose climbing.
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The law student left school in her early twenties and followed her passion for the sport, earning a number of climbing achievements from Yosemite to Patagonia.
For a while she called her car home before eventually settling in Moab, Utah, and discovered her second passion: BASE jumping.
Although she‘s suffered many losses, including the death of
her husband Mario Richards in a wingsuit accident, she‘s never regretted having chosen her unconventional way of life—a life full of extraordinary choices proving that what seems to be a wrong decision at first can be the right one.
Director: Teresa Hoerl
Nick Livesey: My Mountain Healing
(6 mins)
Sunday 25th | 5pm - 7:15pm
In his late teens Nick got into drugs, and did them every day until he was about 30 - and then he discovered the mountains.Today Nick Livesey is a living legend here in Snowdonia. His customer service in the Moel Siabod Cafe is only bettered by his superb mountain images.
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"What I get from these places is solace, cos the world is f*cking crazy, it's nuts."
* Contains strong language - as anyone who knows Nick would expect.
Director: Rob Johnson