author, mountaineering writer – books, blog, opinion
Rising above the Southern Patagonian Ice Field on the border of Chile and Argentina is a narrow finger of rock 3128 metres in height that for over 50 years has been a source of controversy among the climbing community. Last
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Last month the Italian climber Hans Kammerlander became the first person to climb the Second Seven Summits, in other words the second highest peak on each continent. According to 7summits.com, 348 people had climbed the main Seven Summits, the highest
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The photograph on the wall in the farmhouse at La Esperanza where we stayed the night had been taken 15 years ago, but it looked very different from the place we had walked through earlier in the day. I use
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When the Victorian mountaineer Edward Whymper visited Ecuador in 1879 – ostensibly to study the effects of high altitude, but in reality to polish off a few first ascents in the High Andes – he was far from impressed. In
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I’d been climbing for several years before I dared to call myself a mountaineer. I suddenly realised it one evening a couple of years ago when I got introduced to someone down a pub with the words, “here’s my friend
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