Women in the Outdoors Conversation featuring Susan Marie Conrad sponsored by Explorer Chick Adventure Co.

Women in the Outdoors Conversation presented by Explorer Chick Adventure Co.

Join Susan Marie Conrad, Nicki Bruckman, and Yvonne Entingh for coffee and conversation that may include topics such as gaining confidence in the wild, safety, fear, building comfort, benefits of traveling in women specific groups, wildlife encounters, aging, healing and transformative experiences, and advice for other women.

Bring your questions and settle in for a fun kickoff to an inspirational day.

Panelists:

• Susan Marie Conrad, solo long distance sea kayaker and author
• Nicki Bruckmann, CEO and founder of Explorer Chick Adventure Co.
• Yvonne Entingh, long distance hiker and guide

Moderator:

• Amy Anslinger is an Explorer Chick Guide and boasts over 30 years of exploring the wilderness. Her passion for the outdoors ignited during an Outward Bound (OB) Course in Maine, which set her on a lifelong adventure. Subsequently, she completed another OB course in Utah and a semester NOLS course in Alaska before earning a degree in Natural History and Outdoor Education from Northland College along Lake Superior’s shore. Among Amy’s personal highlights are thru-hiking the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada and being the first woman to thru-hike the 1,300-mile Buckeye Trail around Ohio.Since her initial foray into the outdoors, Amy has resided in various parts of the country, leading and inspiring others in adventurous destinations such as western North Carolina, California, New England, Maryland, and Glacier National Park, Montana. For eleven years, she led the Wright State University Outdoor Recreation Program in Dayton, Ohio, where she crafted the trip program, training student leaders, and guiding trips to diverse locales like the bottom of the Grand Canyon, backpacking in the Wind River Range, multi-sport adventures in Vegas, Appalachian Trail backpacking and trail work, sea kayaking in the Ten Thousand Islands of Everglades National Park, and more.Since 2008, Amy’s personal adventures have often included her now teenage daughters and husband. They’ve explored 49 states and numerous National Parks, engaging in paddling trips along the Rio Grande and Boundary Waters, summiting Mount Katahdin, descending into the Grand Canyon, and sharing backcountry campsites in Glacier National Park with moose and bears. When not guiding, Amy serves as the Wellness Coordinator for a Montessori School, spearheading yoga, gardening, and wellness programs for grades pre-k- 12.

Bios

Susan Marie Conrad

Her latest adventure began on May 14, 2022, when she dipped her paddle once again into the Salish Sea and embarked on another long slow paddle in a long skinny boat. She began on San Juan Island in Washington State and finished in Sitka, Alaska, a journey of nearly 1,200 miles that took her 78 days to complete.

Paddling through British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest was one of many highlights. She was fortunate to team up with Pacific Wild to use this leg of her expedition as a platform to raise awareness for Marine Protected Areas in this vibrant and globally important ecosystem. 

www.susanmarieconrad.com

Nicki Bruckmann, a trailblazing entrepreneur and passionate adventurer, is the dynamic CEO and founder of Explorer Chick. Together with her Dream Team of almost 30 women, they are committed to changing the lives of women through adventure travel with a supportive community in the most beautiful places in the world.

With a vision to break down barriers and inspire confidence in women, Nicki has curated a diverse range of adventurous trips and activities, encouraging women to step out of their comfort zones and embrace the transformative power of exploration.

Nicki was born and raised in Cincinnati with a classic Midwestern, middle-class upbringing. She did all the “right” things as an adult – bought a house, got married, and had a promising corporate career. Yet somehow, she wasn’t happy or fulfilled. She was just going through the motions letting life happen to her.

Turns out she didn’t fit that mold very well, so she called it quits in 2014 with a divorce and set out to reinvent herself. Tapping back into her curious, explorer roots she launched Explorer Chick that same year with next to nothing but a crazy idea, blind ambition, grit, and sheer determination.

Without the walls and expectations, her passion for the outdoors and life was rekindled into a full-on love affair. She’s hiked in 48 states, highpointed 38 of them, explored 6 continents and over 20 countries. She’s a cyclist, kayaker, a bad mountain biker, hiker, climber, dabbler in bike packing and pack rafting, terrible surfer, sunset lover, novice photographer, and an annual National Park Pass carrier. She’s spent months at a time living the van life all over the US and western Canada, but now her second home is a small Class B RV named Ms. Fanny’s Rolling Palace that’s far more reliable.

Personal adventure highlights include cycling the Ohio to Erie trail, a 3 day canoe packing trip on the Suwannee, backpacking Half Dome and Grand Canyon with her team, trekking with gorillas in Uganda and Rwanda, several epic climbs in the Moab area, climbing Middle Teton, a single day Presidential Traverse in NH, mountaineering course in Banff, and not letting a particular ice climbing pitch in NH defeat her.

When she is home in Cincinnati, you’ll find her cycling to local breweries, talking to her houseplants, and squeezing in as much time as possible with her family and friends.

Yvonne Entingh, Yvonne Entingh, also known as Princess Doah on the trail, is the owner and lead adventure guide of A Time to Keep, LLC, a company that provides backpacking and hiking trips, including trips on the Appalachian Trail, trails in Big South Fork and in the rugged White Mountains of New Hampshire.

Yvonne began her own backpacking adventures just one month prior to turning fabulous fifty and since then has backpacked numerous trails including the Appalachian Trail, the John Muir Trail in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, the Superior Hiking Trail,the Long Trail of Vermont, the New England National Scenic Trail, the Mountains to Sea Trail of North Carolina finishing on the Outer Banks on the Atlantic Ocean and the southern portion of the Eastern Continental Trail beginning in Key West in the Florida Keys and hiking to the Appalachian Trail on a two thousand mile trek. The ECT includes the Florida Trail, hiking through the everglades and the Alabama and Georgia Pinhoti Trails. She has also hiked the Benton MacKaye Trail, the southern section of the Arizona Trail and the eastern United States trekking on the coast to coast American Discovery Trail beginning at the Atlantic Ocean and ending at the Ohio/Indiana border.The American Discovery Trail includes the 184.5 mile C&O Canal Towpath, the North Bend Trail of West Virginia and 525 miles backpacking across southern Ohio mainly on the Buckeye Trail. With numerous trails in between..including the Knobstone Trail, the Art Loeb Trail, the Foothills Trail, the 100 Mile Wilderness and many miles of the Buckeye Trail and Kentucky’s Sheltowee Trace, Yvonne finds diversity in them all. Yvonne has a love for the mountains and for the last several years has ventured back to her favorite, the Northeast states of Maine and New Hampshire.for hiking and backpacking.  Yvonne has completed the New Hampshire 48 (48 designated 4,000 foot mountains and higher within the White Mountains). many of which she has repeated several times.  She has also accomplished the designated 4,000 footers of Vermont and is shy in completing all but four of the 4,000 footers of Maine.  Now well into her sixties…Yvonne runs half marathons, 5k’s and 10k’s, Tough Mudders and the like and relaxes to yoga and dancing. She has also begun exploring the trails by bike and has cycled the 326 mile Ohio to Erie Trail, bike packing from the shores of Lake Erie in Cleveland to the Ohio River in Cincinnati..Just this past year she drove to Canada and on her way she cycled in Vermont on the Island Line Rail Trail and on the Missisquoi Valley Rail Trail and in New Hampshire on the Pemi Bike Trail in Franconia Notch.. Once she reached Prince Edward Island, she bike packed the 435 mile Island Walk which circumnavigates the beautiful shores of PEI.

As a native of Dayton, Ohio, her passion for the outdoors was developed through the Five Rivers Metroparks where she participated in hiking and backpacking excursions.  A mother of three grown daughters and a grandmother of seven grandchildren Yvonne takes great pleasure in nourishing those relationships.  Her grandchildren have gone caving and kayaking, enjoy backpacking on the Appalachian Trail, hiking in the Red River Gorge. go-carting, trampoline jumping and traveling to major cities to learn about our culture and history with her.. Yvonne loves beaches, mountains, the sun on her face and a gentle breeze blowing through her hair. Cooking, decorating, reading, organizing, planning and loving life Yvonne continues to hike, run, cycle and backpack.