The Kendal Mountain Festival is returning to the Lake District this weekend bringing over 200 speakers to what organizers are calling the world’s biggest social gathering for those who love the outdoors.
Festival organizers are welcoming outdoor enthusiasts back to the Cumbrian town beginning on Thursday 18 November for four days of speakers, screenings and clinics hosted by world-renowned mountaineers.
This year, headlining speakers include Nirmal "Nims" Purja, who shares the European premiere of ‘14 Peaks: Nothing is Impossible’, a new film which follows his quest to summit all 14 of the world’s 8,000m peaks, extreme TV adventurer Aldo Kane with ‘tales from the edge’ including abseiling into an erupting volcano and rowing the Atlantic and Olympic climber Shauna Coxsey, with a preview screening of her new film ‘The Wall: Climbing for Gold’.
Attendees can come in their hiking boots to participate in community walks, recover with screenings of films such as Jimmy Chin’s The Rescue and find free talks, top outdoor brands and live music at Basecamp Village.
Known as the UK’s largest and longest-running gathering of the outdoor community, the festival was founded in 1980 as the Kendal Mountaineering Film Festival and has grown over the last four decades to a large-scale event that attracts athletes, authors and visitors from around the world. This year’s festival will be a hybrid of in-person and online events – including a 10km trail run – allowing people to participate from afar.
The Kendal Mountain Festival takes place from Thursday 18 November to Sunday 21 November.
