My favourite book of 2022: Snow in the Kingdom by Ed Webster

December 21, 2022 Reviews and tributes ed webster, everest, harriet tuckey, mountain literature, norbu tenzing, robert anderson, roger marshall, stephen venables, tibet 2 Comments

This is a poignantly belated book review, if ever there was one. Ed Webster died of a heart attack last month at the age of 66. His book Snow on the Kingdom had been sitting on my bookshelf waiting to be read for more than seven years.

Did George Mallory climb Everest in 1924? I asked ChatGPT for an answer

December 14, 2022 Humour chatgpt, china, chu yin-hua, everest, first ascents, george mallory, history of mountaineering, interviews, noel odell, sandy irvine, tibet, wang fu-chou 6 Comments

There’s been a lot of hype about the new chatbot ChatGPT. If it can impersonate a real person, then it occurred to me that I could interview George Mallory and find out if he actually reached the summit of Everest in 1924. So I did, and here’s what happened.

Wham! Bam! Langtang! Chang! Four days of trekking joy

December 7, 2022 Trip reports dzo jongo, himalayas, india, kang yatze, ladakh, markha valley, trekking 8 Comments

When I woke up inside my tent on the morning after our Dzo Jongo double header, I was very much looking forward to the final few days of relaxing trekking after the strenuous grind of the two climbs. But I didn’t realise quite what a treat I was in for.