author, mountaineering writer – books, blog, opinion
On Saturday 30 September, 2006, foreign climbers at Cho Oyu Base Camp in Tibet watched a line of around 70 local people zigzag up a steep snow slope a short distance away from their tents. They were about to witness something that would become headline news across the world.
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I’ve not won many things in my life. I don’t write the sort of books that will ever be considered for an award and I’ve never been good enough to win a prize for being clever. As for winning something really prestigious? Don’t be silly. But then this happened.
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While I was busy publishing last week’s blog post, physicist Dr Melanie Windridge, who climbed Everest in 2018, published this short educational video that describes five surprising facts about Everest in a way that’s fun, educational and accessible all in one.
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This post doesn’t have anything to do with mountains, so please forgive the indulgence, but it’s a salutary tale about interaction with nature that may interest you. It contains some useful lessons (for me, at least) and a few schoolboy errors that I expect will have some of you shaking your heads in despair.
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I’m posting early this week, because this is an important message that can no longer be delayed. There are no jokes in this week’s blog post. Normal service will be resumed next week with more light-hearted banter to see us
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There is no shortage of advice at the moment about how to protect yourself from COVID-19, a.k.a. the coronavirus. Since many of you are regular travellers, I’m going to chip in with some simple advice of my own that will be familiar to anyone who has trekked a lot in Nepal.
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The Ramblers Association has launched a campaign to reclaim some of Britain’s lost footpaths before legislation comes into effect that turns them permanently into private land. The campaign was accompanied by the launch of a clever app which I had some fun with last weekend.
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The rise of social media means the world’s most beautiful places are becoming busier. Is this a bad thing, and does it mean we should think twice about visiting them? In this posts, I use data to argue these developments are part of a changing world that is getting better.
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I was recently approached by Dr Jeremy Windsor, one of the doctors who climbed Everest as part of the Caudwell Xtreme Everest Expeditions. Jeremy has started up a new blog called Surviving the Death Zone to promote interest in high-altitude medicine.
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ExplorersWeb has been one of the leading sources of news about adventurous expeditions for many years now. But as they say in the pub trade, it’s now under new management. This means that some important changes are taking place. There is a new team of editors and a new design, but this is just the start.
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