Tennessee-born director Ben Clark is a thought-leader and modern-day explorer. He has focused every endeavor on documenting his adventures and making a contribution to the communities in the places where he explores. His great uncle five generations back was the great American explorer William Clark.
At age 23, Clark led his team to the summit of Mount Everest, making him the youngest American to achieve this feat. The resulting podcasting series, The Rest of Everest, won Best of iTUNES awards from 2006 to 2008 and accolades from Steve Jobs. Over the next decade, Clark pioneered routes across Nepal, Tibet, China, and the United States, including first ascents on rock, ice, and alpine in traditional climbing, sport climbing, bouldering, and first ski descents. With the birth of his first child in 2012, he set his sights on safer objectives, which resulted in setting records on some of the toughest ultra-marathon lines in the world.
In 2018, his feature film The Snowman Trek won critical acclaim and screened in more than 400 theaters, including 300+ in the U.S. The Snowman Trek also garnered top placement on bestseller lists across iTUNES, including Best Sports Documentaries, Best Documentaries, Sports, and Best Independent Films. The film was almost exclusively shot by Clark while he ran across Bhutan setting a speed record on the world’s hardest trek with a team of locals and ultramarathon runners. Shot on small cameras, it was a first of its kind for such wide distribution on the silver screen. It was featured in National Geographic, Outside, Men’s Journal, Gear Junkie, 5280, Fox Sports, the Travel Channel, and other media outlets.
Read about Ben’s best-selling feature film, The Snowman Trek, in National Geographic.
Clark has won awards for his long- and short-form media work across platforms. He was on-camera talent in four feature films and hosted a live outdoor adventure-related TV show that broadcast for six seasons. He has been interviewed regularly by CNN and live-streamed through National Geographic’s social channels, including the first live broadcast from the summit of Kilimanjaro. With more than 80,000 followers, Clark’s annual social footprint serves more than 9 million impressions, reaching an audience of more than 6.9 million with an average of nearly 3 million video views and an engagement rate of over 20 percent.
Today he is a proven paid-for programming creator, director, cinematographer, and on-camera talent. His current digital series, Run Around the World, has gained millions of views and impressions, with episodes shot in Argentina, Oman, and China.
