author, mountaineering writer – books, blog, opinion
Some of you have been asking for an insightful analysis of the punch up on the Lhotse Face over the weekend. As usual people have been falling over themselves to report the story without waiting for the facts to emerge, and in the Footsteps on the Mountain team we’re not averse to joining the stampede.
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This time last year I was lying in a tent on the north side of Everest, listening to a deafening wind pound against the nylon beside my head. Every spring a few hundred people seek to share my experience by trying to climb Everest, and thanks to the miracle of modern communications, it’s possible to watch from the sidelines.
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This week the Footsteps on the Mountain team caught up with champion rock climber Bill Scheidt, who has completed many first ascents on bold new routes. Bill is known for a very pure style of climbing, and over the years has become an outspoken critic of climbers who employ artificial aids to enable them to complete an ascent. But it’s not just use of pitons and supplementary oxygen that make his blood boil.
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While George Mallory, Edmund Hillary, Reinhold Messner and Eric Shipton all deserve their place in the Everest pantheon, if there’s to be an award for the greatest of all Everest climbers, then IMHO it should go to Tenzing Norgay, because he had to work so much harder to achieve his ambition than any of the other climbers.
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It might be April and the beginning of spring, but the conditions on Scotland’s hills are still distinctly wintry. I checked the avalanche forecast before spending Easter in the hills above Bridge of Orchy, home of the poet Duncan Ban MacIntyre, famous for composing an Ode to Trousers.
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