Isabel Suppé keynote speaker

Isabel Suppé is a Survivor with a capital S. But more than just that, she's also a climber, a writer, a long-distance cyclist, an adventurer and a true polyglot who speaks six languages. Suppé, a native of Germany discovered her two great passions at a very young age: mountains and words.

After many joyful childhood climbs with her German grand-parents, Suppé moved to France, then won a scholarship to the United States and eventually chose to continue her postgraduate studies in Buenos Aires. And it was in Argentina where her love affair with the Andes began. Irresistibly drawn to the highest peaks of the Americas, Suppé turned into a full-time climber and writer who'd migrate between Mendoza's stunning peaks and Peru and Bolivia's vertiginous ice faces.

Once again in Bolivia, on July 29^th, 2010, a 400 meter fall on Ala Izquierda del Condoriri caused her climbing partner Peter's death and ended life as Suppé had known it. A shattered ankle with exposed bones in the icy oxygen-deprived solitude appeared to be a certain death sentence. But Suppé didn't give up. She spent two days and nights dragging herself over the ice until she finally found help.

“You'll never climb again” was the doctors' sentence as they were considering amputation. An initial 10 surgeries and one year later, Suppé used a pair of special crutches for the approach of what would be “The birthday of the broken foot”, a new extremely difficult vertical ice-route, Robert Rauch and Suppé opened in Bolivia. Suppé hasn't stopped since. Besides crutch-soloing several of the highest peaks in the Andes, she has also cycled across the US, from Germany all the way into the Sahara desert and handbiked across the Alps. Her award-winning books about her adventures, Starry Night and Travels with Rocinante have been translated into four different languages.