author, mountaineering writer – books, blog, opinion
Thanks to a hardcore climbing movie, an obscure peak in the Indian Himalaya is now the most famous Mount Meru in the world. But for many years a far more accessible and attainable peak in northern Tanzania was much more widely known.
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While surfing YouTube the other day, feeling nostalgic for the mountains of Africa, I stumbled across David Breashears’ 2002 IMAX documentary Kilimanjaro: To the Roof of Africa. It was an enjoyable film which had me yearning to go back.
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Chimborazo in Ecuador is definitely the highest mountain in the world when measured from the centre of the Earth. I found a mathematical formula to prove it. I just needed to climb the mountain to be sure of its correct altitude.
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Over the last two weekends we visited Abruzzo National Park and climbed the big four peaks. Abruzzo has provided a feast of mountains for us throughout 2015, and although it’s a close call, I think these have been my favourite of all of them.
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I recently wrote about Colonel Jimmy Roberts, the grandfather of trekking. Now I would like to introduce another important figure in the development of tourism in Nepal, a ballet dancer called Boris, whose colourful life reads like a surreal fairy tale.
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The great mountain explorer Bill Tilman made three treks in Nepal in 1949 and 1950. His first to Langtang was not successful in mountaineering terms, but as an exploratory journey it must have been as enjoyable as any he undertook.
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Not only does the Mulanje Massif in southern Malawi contain some of the loveliest trekking you will find anywhere, but to climb its highest point, 3002m Sapitwa Peak, involves a very unusual scramble indeed. Here’s my account of our ascent.
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I promised to provide an update on where I’m at with the book I’ve been threatening to publish about my journey from lowly hill walker to Everest summiteer. Here it is, along with a short teaser from the book in the hope that you might be tempted to buy it when it comes out.
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You would think in this age of satellite mapping and websites like Google Earth the highest point in every country has been calculated by a machine, and you can just look it up somewhere. This isn’t the case, as I discovered when I tried to find the highest peak in Zambia.
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I watched a fantastic documentary on BBC4 last night which demonstrated how the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park in the United States benefited the entire ecosystem almost immediately.
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