Liz Daley was a female American splitboard mountaineer who passed away in an avalanche in September 29, 2014. Liz touched the lives of thousands of people during her short life on this planet, and her ambitious sense of adventure, technical skills, and strength was overshadowed only by her trademark positive attitude that left impressions on all her knew her. In her honor, SheJumps created the Liz Daley Scholarship fund that will live on to support women’s goals in the realm of mountaineering and alpinism. We hope to support women who want to gain technical skills in the mountains and possibly go on to pursue mountain guiding as a career, as Liz did.
In its inaugural year, SheJumps is awarding the scholarship in the amount of $1,400 CAD towards the 2015 Alpine Finishing School, an all-women’s ski mountaineering course in the Selkirk mountains of British Columbia. The scholarship received over 40 applicants, and it was extremely difficult to narrow down a top candidate. In the end, the scholarship committee selected Gaelen Engler, a splitboarder from Montana who happened to be an acquaintance of Liz’s:
“I am unbelievably humbled and grateful to be awarded the Liz Daley Scholarship! Liz was an incredible inspiration to me upon moving to the Cascades this past summer, and her tenacity and love for adventure attributed to pushing my own limits on the granite and the glaciers of those impressive peaks. To be given the opportunity to continue working on my own skills and techniques alongside other passionate, adventurous women is honestly a dream come true. Thank you SheJumps, Liz, and all of her friends and family for encouraging me to continue finding strength, meaning, community, and stoke in the mountains!”
We hope you will join us in congratulating Gaelen for winning this inaugural scholarship and thank all the wonderful applicants who wrote in to tell us how they “Live Like Liz.”