Fort William Mountain Festival 2026: five must-see events

1) Skiing the Highlands, 13 February Over the last three decades, Al Todd has clocked up an extraordinary amount of time on skis in Scotland’s mountains – he’s skied to the top of more than 100 Munros, and was the first to complete the the so-called “Tower Double” on Ben Nevis, which involves scaling the intimidating Tower Ridge before skiing back down Tower Gully, itself a climbing route. He’s currently snowsports director of Mountaineering Scotland, and for this event he’ll be sharing some of the highlights of his extensive backcountry skiing career.

The pictures should be pretty good, too: in addition to his ski mountaineering skills Todd is also a talented photographer, and his pictures of dreamy Scottish descents will be familiar to many enthusiasts, not least those who have recently invested in a copy of the new edition of the Ski Mountaineering Scotland, edited by Colwyn Jones, in which Todd’s images of Peter Mackenzie tree skiing on Meall a’ Bhuachaille in the Cairngorms and Al Bird making telemark turns on Sgurr nan Conbhairean on the north shore of Loch Cluanie are among the choicest visual treats.

2) Behind the Lens: Scottish Adventure Film & Photography, 14 February Speaking of shutterbugs, in the last couple of decades the world of adventure film and photography has been utterly transformed thanks to drones, GoPros, the advent of social media and huge leaps in the quality of digital cameras. This event brings together four Scottish creatives who have ridden this new wave of technology with great skill: Hamish Frost, Ryan Balharry, Rachel Sarah and Johny Cook. Find out how they’ve managed to get things so right – and what they’ve learned from occasionally getting things wrong. 

3) Champions of the Golden Valley + Compass Collective, 14 February Born in the Hindu Kush mountains above Bamyan, Afghanistan, Sayed Alishah Farhang fell in love with skiing at a young age and dreamed of becoming the first person to represent his country as an alpine ski racer in the Olympics. When he fell just short of qualifying, however, he set out to create a ski community in his hometown. At the Bamyan Ski Club, he worked to develop a women’s skiing program – a first for Afghanistan – and he also became the race director of The Afghan Ski Challenge, a backcountry ski race which brought together athletes and media from around the country.

READ MORE: Skiing: New-look Scottish Freedom Series offers 'competition and community'

A screening of director Ben Sturgulewski’s film about Farhang will be followed by two brand new shorts, written, directed, filmed, acted and edited by young people supported by Compass Collective – a charity which helps refugees and asylum seekers through creative projects and arts-led professional development programmes.

4) Paddle Sports Film Session, 15 February Grab yourself some popcorn and make sure you’re sitting comfortably for what promises to be an epic triple bill of paddle sports films. In Freeland – A Blackwater Story, director Justin Harris dives into the kayaking history of the Blackwater River in the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia, and the hardcore, “steep-creeking” community that’s developed around it over the last 40 years.

READ MORE: Scots adventurer Mark Agnew on his Arctic kayak double first and the importance of group dynamics

In a somewhat mellower vein, To The Sea follows two ukulele-toting Londoners, Hugo Pedder and Ben Andrews, as they attempt to pilot a self-built raft made out of wooden pallets and plastic containers along the Vindelälven river in northern Sweden to the Baltic Sea – an endeavour that took them six years, on and off. And finally, cranking the adrenaline levels up to 11, Gabon Unchartered: Sending Ivindo Falls follows the social media stars of the SEND Collective as they take on the super-sized waterfalls on the stretch of the Ivindo River that lies between Makokou and Booué.

5) Women with Altitude, 15 February Published in 2022, Anna Fleming’s memoir Time on Rock is one of the most original and thought-provoking books about climbing you could hope to read. Ostensibly it’s the story of her development as a climber, as she progresses from uncertain beginner to accomplished expert, but in fact it’s about much more than that – a detailed examination of the various different types of rock she encounters on her travels around the UK, and also an exploration of how humans have interacted with rock over thousands of years. Last year Fleming travelled to Bolivia, where she met and climbed with the so-called Cholita Climbers, a group of Indigenous Andean women who scale high-altitude peaks while wearing huge, colourful skirts, and she’ll be giving a talk about her experiences at Fort William. Who are these distinctive-looking mountaineers? And why do they insist on such an apparently impractical dress code? If anyone can bring their stories to life, it’ll be Fleming.

For full programme details, see www.mountainfestival.co.uk

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