Banff bookends - 3.2 #sol18 Story Challenge

In the first week of March, the Banff Mountain Film Festival came to me. I saw French aerialists surfing a zip-line hundreds of feet above dense forest. I met Apa Sherpa and learned of his quest to enhance education for young people in his native Nepal. ("Without education, we have no choice," he says.) I gawked at a mountain-bike rider pedaling above and underground, over snow and ice. I joined a trio of kite-skiers/kayakers on an unprecedented expedition across untrammeled Greenland. I sat in the cockpit with an Alaskan bush pilot and her young daughter. I marveled at Kilian Jornet, powered mainly by four Snickers bars, jogging and skiing across numerous Norwegian peaks. I cheered both for Nubian ibex as they scrambled up and down steep cliffs to evade a predatory fox and for Maureen Beck as she persevered with her one-legged partner to climb a challenging 5.12 route, single-handed.

In the last week of March, I'll actually be in Banff where I'm predicting tamer adventures.