Jim Davidson

Biography

Jim Davidson -- Resilience Expert, Author, Adventure Speaker, Expedition Leader
Jim blends lessons from all these experiences to share compelling wisdom about being resilient in business and life.

Climbing and Leadership
During his 29 years of high-altitude climbs, rescues, and dramatic survival situations, Jim has:
~Summited the sixth highest peak in the world (Cho Oyu at 26,906 feet in Tibet)
~Climbed and led expeditions to Alaska, Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Mexico & Nepal
~Spent more than a year of his life sleeping in soggy tents

With training in wilderness first aid, avalanche safety, and vertical rescue, Jim honed his resilience expertise in the field as an expedition leader, ice climbing instructor, and mountain rescuer. Jim has:
~Volunteered to rescue other hikers and climbers on numerous occasions
~Been commended twice by the U.S. National Park Service for leadership and personal sacrifice on mountain rescues
~Saved himself from 80-feet deep inside a glacial crevasse

Of special interest, Jim`s compelling survival story was featured in a one-hour episode of "I Shouldn`t Be Alive" on Animal Planet (which aired January 2011).

Speaking and Business
Jim has mesmerized audiences across the USA and internationally as a keynote speaker and trainer since 1990. A renowned motivational speaker based in Colorado, Jim owns and operates Speaking of Adventure.

His amazing tale of resilience is described in a new adventure memoir that Jim co-authored with Pulitzer-finalist journalist, Kevin Vaughan ("The Ledge: An Adventure Story of Friendship and Survival on Mount Rainier", Ballantine Books/Random House, July 26, 2011).

Prior to becoming a motivational speaker, Jim`s business achievements included:
~Leading hundreds of training workshops for scientists, lawyers and corporate managers
~Working 20 years as an environmental consultant, expert witness, & corporate manager
~Founding and running a consulting firm, Alpine Environmental Inc
~Earning degrees in geology (B.S. from University of Massachusetts-Amherst) and environmental geology (M.S. from Colorado State University)
~Painting electrical towers charged with 230,000 volts for his father`s painting business

Jim lives in Colorado with his two adventurous children and his very, very tolerant wife! Every spring, Jim volunteers to teach hundreds of elementary school children to climb. He is an avid rock climber and ice climber. Jim enjoys skiing, backpacking, photography, racing numerous half-marathons and one marathon (3:42), and even running up a 14,000-foot peak occasionally.

Publications

The Ledge:
An Adventure Story of Friendship and Survival on Mount Rainier

"My eyes travel up the frozen walls. I figure it is eighty feet up to the sunlight. The walls above me climb up at about eighty degrees, then they go dead vertical, and then, higher up, they overhang. It is as if I am looking out from the belly of a beast, its jagged white teeth interlocking above me."

In June 1992, best friends Jim Davidson and Mike Price stood triumphantly atop Washington`s Mount Rainier, celebrating what they hoped would be the first of many milestones in their lives as passionate young mountaineers. Instead, their conquest gave way to catastrophe when a cave-in plunged them deep inside a glacial crevasse -- the pitch-black, ice-walled hell that every climber`s nightmares are made of.

An avid adventurer from an early age, Davidson was already a seasoned climber at the time of the Rainier ascent, fully aware of the risks and hopelessly in love with the challenge. But in the blur of a harrowing free fall, he suddenly found himself challenged by nature`s grandeur at its most unforgiving. Trapped on a narrow, unstable frozen ledge, deep below daylight and high above a yawning chasm, he would desperately battle crumbling ice and snow that threatened to bury him alive, while struggling in vain to save his fatally injured companion. And finally, with little equipment, no partner, and rapidly dwindling hope, he would have to make a fateful choice -- between the certainty of a slow, lonely death or the seeming impossibility of climbing for his life.

Titles

Rally Your Resilience - Reach Your Summits in Business and Life!

Resilient Leadership & Engaged Teamwork

Surviving Storms

Expedition Execution - Reaching BIG Goals

Resilience Retreats