Hilaree Nelson, Captain of The North Face Athlete Team and 2018's National Geographic Adventurer of the Year, is the first woman to summit two 8,000 meter peaks, Mt. Everest and Lhotse, in one 24-hour push. Her grit and skills in mountaineering are world-renowned. She climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro with a broken leg, skied from the summit of the world's sixth-highest mountain, the 26,906-foot Cho Oyu, without supplemental oxygen, and returned to the 27,940-foot Lhotse a second time to ski from the summit.
Outside Magazine has named her "one of the most adventurous women in the world of sports" and Men's Journal called her "one of the most adventurous women of the last 25 years." Her feats on some of the world's most remote mountains have also been featured in several documentaries, including Lhotse, Down to Nothing, The Denali Experiment (directed by Jimmy Chin and Renan Ozturk), and K2: The Impossible Descent.
Hilaree is also a leading environmental activist through her work with Protect Our Winters. She has been described as a “role model and mentor to other women adventurers, [who] continues to push the envelope of not only geographical exploration but an exploration of our human capacity to challenge social norms."
In this episode of Intersections, Prof. Hitendra Wadhwa has a conversation with Hilaree Nelson on the topic “Seeking Your Greatest Adventure”.
What would life be like if you followed your heart in the pursuit of exploration and adventure? If you made a habit of stepping out of your comfort zone every day? If every project you took on required remarkable courage, humility and laser-sharp focus? If one wrong move could make the difference between success and failure, between living and dying?
The episode "Seeking Your Greatest Adventure" offers key insights on: