Susan Purvis
Susan Purvis
Follow your Path—what ever it may be
Susan Purvis’s outdoor career for the past 25 years is anything but normal. She makes an unconventional living by traveling, exploring, and giving back to people in need that live in some of the most remote places on earth.
Susan grew up in a small mining town in northern Michigan, and at the age of 17, she enrolled at the University of Montana to study geology, and worked for the University’s Outdoor Program leading backcountry trips throughout the west. Soon she embarked on adventures of her own like riding her bicycle through New Zealand, Australia, and Canada on just seven dollars per day.
After graduating with a degree in Geology, Susan worked as a survival instructor in the desert southwest teaching students how to live off the land by making fire with sticks, foraging for food, and building shelters. Susan later worked in Antarctica as a shuttle bus driver, skied a season in Chamonix, France, and lived with the Kanamari Indians in the Amazon jungle. Eventually she landed work exploring for gold as a geologist in Montana, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic.
Susan finally traded her geology career for a chance to work in medicine and avalanche search and rescue while living in the ski town of Crested Butte, Colorado. She went to work as a medic at an urgent care clinic near the base of the ski area where she learned about trauma, high altitude sickness, and common medical problems. Susan also ski patrolled professionally, volunteered with the local ambulance service, and guided skiers in the backcountry all while training her puppy Tasha for search and rescue work. Susan and Tasha spent the next decade responding to avalanches and search and rescue missions around Colorado while repairing the sick and injured. Susan and Tasha received Congressional Recognition for their efforts in avalanche search and rescue.
In 1997, Susan started teaching wilderness medicine courses for Wilderness Medical Associates, the largest wilderness medical training organization in the world, and in 1998, she founded her own wilderness instruction company, Crested Butte Outdoors. Susan now teaches and educates students around the world in wilderness medicine, search and rescue, and survival.
Most recently, Susan worked as a television host, wilderness medicine and survival expert while exploring one of the most remote and hostile places on earth-- the Danakil Depression of Ethiopia--with a team of scientists. Their three week journey will be aired on the BBC World and Discovery Channels in 2008.
Susan Gives Back- Wilderness Medicine as a Second Language
Beginning in 2003, Susan developed and taught a high altitude medical course for the African Guides working on Mt. Kilimanjaro at 19,340 feet. The highly successful courses in Africa naturally led her to the Mt. Everest region in Nepal where she founded the nonprofit Wilderness Medicine as a Second Language school (WMSL). The WMSL School provides free education to the local Sherpa guides that carry gear and guide clients to elevations above 29,000 feet. The school’s main objective is to teach students how to recognize and prevent high altitude sickness to protect themselves and their clients. Following her trip to Ethiopia, Susan traveled to the Mt. Everest region this winter for her 3rd annual high altitude medicine course. This year she joined forces with the Alex Lowe Charitable Foundation. The highly successful WMSL School is now well established in the Khumbu Valley of Nepal and is growing quickly.High Altitude Rescue Dogs (HARD)
Susan has trained and successfully deployed a high altitude search and rescue K-9 since 1995. Susan and her dog Tasha have located victims buried in avalanches, drowned in lakes, lost to plane crashes, and lost in the woods. This challenging work has united many families with their missing loved ones
Susan and other K-9 handlers recognize that there is a need for well-trained search and rescue dog teams that are confident and competent working in extreme, often times dangerous, and difficult mountain conditions. As a result, Susan has founded the dog group, High Altitude Rescue Dogs (HARD). The purpose of HARD is to provide highly trained K-9 handlers and their dog teams to find missing persons in avalanche, water, and wilderness missions for law enforcement agencies, search and rescue teams, and grieving families.
Other Projects
Susan is currently writing a memoir about her decade long plus search and rescue career with her search dog Tasha set in the remote and sometimes dangerous high country of Colorado.Susan is a Marmot sponsored athlete. www.marmot.com
Susan at the end of the day in Ethiopia, Danakil Depression
Susan trains with Tasha for rapid response Avalanche deployment