Welcome to the 2nd Annual

Keynote Speaker
 

"Reflections from a Hard Seat"

An Evening with Jill Fredston
 

Jill Fredston has spent decades predicting avalanches, triggering them with explosives, teaching potential victims how to stay alive, and leading rescue efforts in Alaska. Then every summer she climbs into an ocean-going rowing shell and heads out on long journeys in the Arctic and sub-Arctic. With her husband, Doug Fesler, in a small boat of his own, she has rowed the equivalent of the circumference of the earth - more than 25,000 miles along the coast of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Spitsbergen, and Norway. Jill is the author of Rowing to Latitude: Journeys along the Arctic's Edge which won the 2002 National Outdoor Book Award, and Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches. With Fesler, she co-wrote Snow Sense: A Guide to Evaluating Snow Avalanche Hazard. A professional speaker, she specializes in discussing strategies for dealing with uncertainty and change, managing risks in high stakes environments, and decision-making. Jill and Doug are co-directors of Alaska Mountain Safety Center Inc., a non-profit organization they founded in 1986. They make their home in the Chugach Mountains above Anchorage.

In Reflections from a Hard Seat, Jill Fredston will look back at years of rowing along the exposed coastlines and share strategies for weighing risks and making good decisions; insights often gained as a result of making poor decisions. She will also celebrate extraordinary moments of glide and the grace of wild places.