author, mountaineering writer – books, blog, opinion
Much has been written about Joe Brown, the great alpinist and rock climber who made the first ascent of Kangchenjunga and died earlier this year. But we don’t often hear about the time he followed an ancient treasure map into the Andes in search of Inca gold.
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It’s not clear why Kangchenjunga should be considered the last great mountain, but whatever: this book is a comprehensive history of all expeditions up to its first ascent in 1955. I learned a lot from it, and I can thoroughly recommend it, however well acquainted you are with Kangchenjunga’s history.
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Life has been hectic in the Horrell household recently and I’ve been finding it hard to keep on top of my writing. It is time for a holiday. We are returning to Ecuador for a couple of weeks to hike and climb some less-frequented peaks.
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It’s not often I’ve sat through a whole silent movie that doesn’t feature slapstick comedy and a honky-tonk piano playing in the background, but in this case I made an exception. It’s archive footage of the 1955 British Kangchenjunga expedition.
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By the time you read this I will be somewhere in the Kangchenjunga region of Nepal, in the far east of the country near its eastern border with India. It’s a region dominated by one huge mountain, 8,586m Kangchenjunga, the third-highest mountain in the world.
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Last year fifteen million people, a quarter of the population of Britain, watched the final of a cake-baking competition. In 1967 the same number watched a live broadcast of the second ascent of an obscure sea stack off the coast of Orkney.
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Pete Boardman was only 31 years old when he went missing with his climbing partner Joe Tasker on the Northeast Ridge of Everest in 1982, but already he was a climbing legend who had packed an enormous amount into his short life. He climbed Everest by a new route on the Southwest Face in 1975 at the age of only 24, and the world’s third highest mountain Kangchenjunga also by a new route in 1979.
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When my mate Dan asked me if I wanted to go and see Joe Brown talk about the first ascent of Kangchenjunga, I didn’t even realise he was still alive (Joe Brown that is, not Dan). There aren’t many climbers
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