author, mountaineering writer – books, blog, opinion
In the last post, I explained how we came to return to the Dominican Republic and attempt its highest mountain, Pico Duarte, by the Mata Grande Route. I covered the first part of our trek through jungle on the northern side of the Cordillera Central mountain range. I pick up the story as we leave our campsite for the main ascent.
Read more
With Edita working in Haiti for a second year, we returned to the Dominican Republic to explore its mountains for a second time. Last year we climbed its highest mountain, Pico Duarte, by its quickest and easiest trail, the La Cienaga Route. This year, we opted for the remoter Mata Grande trail.
Read more
Situated at a confluence of the Bhote Khosi, Trisuli and Langtang rivers at the end of the road from Kathmandu, Syaphru Besi was the gateway to the Langtang trek, Tamang Heritage Trail, and pilgrimage route to Mt Kailash in Tibet. That was until last month.
Read more
I’ve made several visits to the Black Mountains over the years, but I had never climbed its highest peak, Waun Fach (811m), so this year I decided to put this omission behind me by climbing it twice, once from the east and once from the west.
Read more
Deep in montane forest above 1,500m in the Dominican Republic’s Cordillera Central, we heard a mournful sound like an orchestra tuning up. It was all around us, everywhere we travelled, but we never saw the bird that made it. The locals had their own name for it, but what was it?
Read more
I climbed Lhakpa Ri on 11 May 2007 as part of a commercial expedition by UK mountaineering operator Jagged Globe. This follow up to my last post about the first ascent by Bill Tilman and Edmund Wigram features an excerpt from my diary describing my own ascent 72 years later.
Read more
I’ve recently finished reading Mount Everest the Reconnaissance 1935 by Tony Astill. The book was interesting to me because it described the first ascent of 7,045m Lhakpa Ri by Bill Tilman and Edmund Wigram, a peak that I climbed myself in 2007.
Read more
I only bring you the really important stories on this blog, and here’s one that will have you choking on your Kendal Mint Cake. With the Everest season over, along with the usual stories about traffic jams, it seems like a good time to report on a far more heinous example of queuing on mountaintops that has emerged in recent years.
Read more
Record claims require scrutiny. People talk a lot about whether oxygen should or shouldn’t be used at high altitude. They don’t talk so much about HOW MUCH oxygen is used, and this is absolutely crucial. As someone who used different flow rates of oxygen at different times during my time as a high-altitude mountaineer, I thought I would give you my perspective.
Read more
About four years ago, Edita and I decided to start bagging the highest point in each of the UK’s counties. A couple of weeks ago, we finished the last of the thirteen historic county tops in Wales. They contain some enjoyable hills that we may not otherwise have explored.
Read more