Conrad Anker is a climber’s climber, at home on a faraway alpine wall or the sparkling ice of
his home canyon, Hyalite, located in the Gallatin Range of southwestern Montana. Over
decades in the mountains, he has come to value the rarified air of Antarctica, the Himalaya
and Montana equally; inspired by the value of immersion in other ecosystems and cultures,
he’s become more fully enmeshed in both the physical and communal landscape of his
hometown of Bozeman.
Conrad came to climbing by way of his family, learning a deep appreciation for the outdoors
from his California childhood, an appreciation and respect that has deepened as climbing
took him around the world. That journey has taken him from the northern realms of Alaska
and Baffin Island to the farthest southern reaches of Patagonia and Antarctica, where in
1997 he, with Alex Lowe and Jon Krakauer, climbed Rakekniven, a 2,500-foot wall in Queen
Maud Land. That climb led to both a film and magazine piece by the National Geographic,
an organization that Conrad continues to collaborate with. In 2011, Conrad established the
much coveted first ascent of the Shark’s Fin on Meru alongside Jimmy Chin and Renan
Ozturk. The film documenting Conrad’s lifelong ambition, MERU, went on to win the 2015
audience award at Sundance Film Festival.
As captain of The North Face Athlete Team, Conrad urges climbers to be boots on the
ground in observing the changes wrought by man-made climate change. He is also civically
active in his home state of Montana, serving on the boards of the Montana State University
Leadership Institute, Protect Our Winters, Bozeman Ice Tower Foundation, Gallatin County
Fair Board and the Alex Lowe Charitable Foundation.