Laurence De la Ferriere – Keynote Speaker

Laurence de la Ferrière was born in Casablanca in 1957. She was around twenty years old when she discovered the mountains and consequently gave up medicine to set out to conquer the highest summits of the world.

Laurence is the first and only woman in the world to have crossed the Antarctic completely, On November 23 1999, Laurence de la Ferrière left the South pole. She had with her only a pair of skis and sails, and the only links connecting her with civilization were a telephone satellite and a beacon from Argos. In front of her, was a large span of white earth as far as the eye can see, and a crossing of about 3000 km under temperatures as low as -50 ° C.

Nobody before her had even dared to imagine such a crossing. On February 6, 2000, she reached the base of Dumont d’Urville at the edge of the ocean. During those 73 days she withstood cold, wind, waves of ice, fear, thirst, exhaustion, extreme solitude but also experienced the magic of a landscape which no human eye has ever embraced before her. Her book “Only in the wind of ices” published by Robert Laffont redraws this exceptional adventure.

In 2006 she crossed the Alps in 100 days (a total of 38 mountains, 15 peaks, passes and 110 120 000 vertical meters).