Kendal Mountain Festival’s Official Skills and Training Partner
Kendal Mountain Festival is a celebration of outdoor culture, bringing together adventurers, filmmakers and lecturers to inspire more people to explore, enjoy and represent mountains, wilderness and their cultures.
We were delighted to attend this year as the Festival’s Official Skills and Training Partner. Our vibrant tipi was based in the heart of the legendary Basecamp Village; a social hub for brands to bring their story to life amongst people that love and cherish the outdoors. Ticket sales were over 25,000, which was up from 20,000 last year with a brilliant broad reach of disciplines within the outdoor industry represented.
Following an amazing weekend, we want to thank the incredible people that made it happen.
Bringing Our Tipi to Life
Whilst our cosy tipi was by no means our instructors’ natural environment, it gave us the perfect platform to capture our passion for the outdoors. It was a place where we could catch up with old friends and make new ones. Shout out to Alex from Covered in Style for supplying our wonderful tipi and Colin Holden Design for creating such a magical space.
No details were missed, from the foliage and slate archway to the hanging lit-up kayak. We used an array of colourful kit provided by our lovely sponsors to dress the interior. Thank you to Mountain Equipment, Peak, Scarpa, Petzl, DMM, Fjällräven, O’Shea, Edelweiss, Deuter and Evolution Bikes.
Our Talented Speakers
With the help from our qualified instructors, Mountain Equipment athletes and other external speakers, we provided our top tips on how to plan anything from your first solo adventure, weekend camping trips with the family, to bigger expeditions abroad.
A massive thank you to Jake Webb for capturing the whole event and to all of Friday’s speakers:
- Ruth Hall – The Role of a National Outdoor Centre
- Pete Astles – Peak Sewn Friendships
- James Bruton – Four Months to Change Your Life with PYB’s Fast Track Programme
- Dave Evans – A Year in the Life of a PYB Instructor
- Harrison Ward – Live Cooking with Fell Foodie
- Dani Robertson – The Secrets of Eryri’s (Snowdonia’s) Dark Skies
- Brad Reed and Iona Pawson – Your Adventure Toolkit
- Brad Reed, Fran Cavanagh and Jen Roberts – Kickstarting Your Next Adventure
- Kirk and the Cumbrian Team – All Things Ultra Marathons
- Rich Breeden – Trash Free Trails
- Tom Livingstone and Lou Beetlestone – UK Skills to Big Hills
- Dave MacLeod and Dave Evans – How to Improve as a Rock Climber
- Harrison Ward – Live Cooking with Fell Foodie
- Lou Beetlestone and Emma Warren – Winter Kit and Coffee
- Will Nicholls and Rich Gentry – Avalanche Awareness
- James Thacker – Avalanche Decision-Making
- Matt Stygall – Why Winter is Ace
If you would like to view speaker presentations, you can view some of them here.
Live Scribing with Chapple Cartoons
We wanted to capture our talks in a powerful and memorable way, and we are delighted with the outcome. The amazingly talented Caroline from Chapple Cartoons joined us with her giant canvas for a day of live scribing. We loved watching the drawing evolve throughout the day, and even incorporate your own messages into the illustration. We can’t wait to showcase the canvas here at the centre.
A Full Tent for Mappy Hour
Mappy Hour… think free beer, an Augmented Reality (AR) sandbox, mingling, and maps. Lots of them!
We loved hosting our first Mappy Hour sessions with the help from Ordnance Survey (OS) and JBA Trust. It was great to see so many adventurers in one place, hanging out over beer that we created especially for the festival. You got to design your own landscapes through JBA Trust’s AR Sandbox; an interactive visualisation tool that shows how topography affects water moving through catchment. We also saw your competitive side through some map-related competitions that had some fantastic prizes up for grabs.
Night Navigation and eBike Sampling
Some very keen folk braved the elements to sample the delights that the Lake District had to offer through our Night Navigation and eBike Sampling. Thanks to Plas y Brenin’s, Iona Pawson, James Bruton and Chris Evans, for heading up the sessions, and to Specialized Bicycles for our Turbo Levis and Exposure Lights for supporting the event and supplying the very best lights for the job. We were delighted to give away a superb Exposure Diablo MK12 as part of our bike competition, kindly donated by Exposure Lights.
Relive the Festival Online
We would like to thank the Kendal Mountain team for such an inspiring and community-led event. We hope that sharing our stories encourages more communities and young people to get active in the outdoors. You can catch up on the festival online through the Kendal Mountain Player. Looking ahead, we are excited to join Kendal Mountain Festival for the 2023 UK Festival Tour, packed with new speakers and films to see. If you’d like to know more, sign up here!
