author, mountaineering writer – books, blog, opinion
Eight years ago I hiked the Cocuy Circuit trek in Colombia. To whet your appetite for this beautiful country, here are five videos covering all five days of the trek I completed in 2011. The smiles in these videos tell it all.
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Eight years ago I travelled to Colombia and completed the Cocuy Circuit, one of the most beautiful treks I’ve ever had the pleasure of walking. I will be returning to Colombia over Christmas, this time to trek and climb the volcanoes of Los Nevados.
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There are few more quintessentially conical volcanoes than Cotopaxi, and it’s hard to look at without wanting to climb it. Edita hadn’t, and as soon as the mountain re-opened after the eruption in 2015, she had to do so at the first opportunity.
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There aren’t many characters in Joe Simpson’s book Touching the Void, and the main one spends most of the story entirely alone, contemplating existence as he crawls for three days along a glacier. How on earth were they going to make a stage version of this?
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Formerly one of Ecuador’s most active volcanoes, Tungurahua was re-opened for climbing in 2017. It was an obvious objective for us this year, especially since it just squeaks into the list of 10 peaks in Ecuador over 5,000m.
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‘Every once in a lifetime, a book comes along that is so outrageously witty that you have to wear a corset to avoid splitting your sides with laughter. Feet and Wheels to Chimborazo is just such a book,’ said my dad.
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Welcome to this, the second in my series of Apennine ‘up the backside’ posts, so called because I tackle the mountain from the opposite of its usual side. I have previously talked about an ascent of Monte Marsicano via its
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Last week was one of those weeks when a mountaineering story is so big that it makes it into the popular press. On the face of it, it was a straightforward story of someone smashing a record to smithereens. But if you dig a little deeper, there is another side to it.
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In local Ecuadorian legend, the god Taita Imbabura is said to have fought the god Mojanda for the affections of Maria Isabel Cotacachi. Imbabura won this battle and took Cotacachi for his wife. As I reported in a previous post
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If, like me, you’ve never wondered why Google don’t feature mountaineers on their daily Google Doodle, then you would have been surprised to open your web browser on Wednesday to find a cartoon line drawing of somebody in a pith helmet tugging on a rope.
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