Women's Adventure Summit

What do you get when you put a group of adventurous women of all ages together for a long weekend of trail running, canoeing, abseiling, mountain biking, SUPing and a stack of other activities? Australia’s first ever Women’s Adventure Summit! This September, women converged on The Great Lakes District in New South Wales, three hours north of Sydney, for this groundbreaking event.

The Women’s Adventure Summit is the brainchild of Kerryann and Amy, the founders of Travel Play Live - the women’s adventure lifestyle magazine - and brought women together from all across Australia. As a sponsor of the event, ioMerino not only supported the summit but went along to talk about dressing for adventure and get amongst it all. The first thing we noticed when we got there was there’s no such thing as a typical ‘adventure woman’, with participants ranging from their 20s, to their 60s. The women came from all sorts of backgrounds, but all united with a love of adventure. The weekend itself was filled with a wonderful assortment of activities and information sessions, with these wild women doing everything from abseiling and mountain biking, through to learning navigation, outdoor survival skills and much, much more. There was also no shortage of inspiration courtesy of some of the event ambassadors including Hayley Talbot, Samantha Gash and Caroline Pemberton. We even sent our own ioMerino Outsider Sputnik up to talk about all things layering and dressing for adventure.

On the opening night, speaker Kemi Nekvapil addressed the crowd, and any concerns in the room, assuring them they were all the perfect age, size and level of fitness to be there. And at the core of her talk was this core message: “For every woman on her adventure journey, whether she has just begun or is practically a pro, she grows stronger and more courageous every time she says ‘I can do this’, and the world needs more and more strong and courageous women right now. From an external level we can not be what we can not see. The more of us that are out there pushing our physical and emotional selves as a way to get to know ourselves and others better, we give other women permission to come on the adventure too.”

The end result wasn’t just a weekend full of session and activities, but a genuinely transformational experience where every single person pushed their boundaries, challenged their beliefs, and left not only with new ideas and skills, but a whole new zest to adventure and life. You can find out more about Travel Play Live, including their new Women’s Adventure Grant, here.