Caroline Elliott

First British Woman to integrate the French Mountain Rescue as an avalanche SAR dog handler and internationally published author of the first children's snow safety booked based on the adventures of a very special canine companion

We’ll slide onto Caroline’s exciting path into the exhilarating and fast-moving world of avalanche rescue, where her resilience has driven her successively through an extremely challenging environment. Caroline’s message: “No mountain is insurmountable, following your passion with focus, drive and above all self-belief is key. You may slip and slide a few times, you just need to jump back up and place your feet firmly back onto your chosen path to achieve what might appear impossible. Our best lessons are learnt through failure!”

Caroline is one of only a few women working professionally in an area still male led. Drawing on her own experience, she explains how resilience, leadership, communication and teamwork enabled her to successfully follow this unique career path and how the lessons she’s learned can apply to anyone – male or female – that aspires to an equally unusual or challenging career.

Caroline equally reinforces how a blend of the right mindset, preparation and the ability to adapt, enables us to achieve what we set as our goals, whilst being mindful of our own well-being.

Her talk guides us behind the scenes of an all-gripping mountain adventure where we look into ski patrol, bombing, avalanche rescue and the incredibly special world of avalanche dogs where the relationship bond is everything.

With Caroline’s life path no-one would even suspect that she had a phobia of school at the young age of 5, to then succumb to bullying in her secondary education after a gymnastics’ injury, leaving school without a single foreign language GSCE to go on to study German and Spanish at university, culminating in a move to live in France!

Caroline also offers an interactive workshop to help familiarize students with specialized mountain safety equipment whilst at the same time guiding them through the techniques used for searching those caught in an avalanche.

Immediately participants will see how communicating as a team is paramount for being effective in such a stressful situation. We look at how certain elements can be transferred to just a simple hike in the outdoors.

To conclude, Caroline’s internationally published book- 'Fjord’s Mountain Mission’ was created during lockdown. After the sudden death of her faithful companion Fjord, fuelled by her grief she used the time positively collating all their memories together. Over the many months ‘Fjord’s Mountain Mission’ was born and is now available in French, German and Swedish with other languages planned for future publication. Fjord lives on, reaching the hearts of children around the world.

Caroline’s talks are relevant to children of all ages: from primary to sixth form and are particularly inspiring for young women.