author, mountaineering writer – books, blog, opinion
Here at the Footsteps on the Mountain blog, we try to take a look at the quirkier side of mountaineering by highlighting stories that don’t get much attention elsewhere. I bet you can’t think of a single fish that has scaled Everest, but there are a few.
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The learning curve for beginners is always much steeper. Now that I’m safely back from my first ever cycling trips, I thought it would be a good moment to share some tips.
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False summit claims were back in the news when a Swedish mountaineer retracted his summit claim after studying photographs and realising he hadn’t reached the very top. He was praised for his refreshing honesty, but a similar story of mountaineering integrity also deserves attention.
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News is reaching us that a 42-year-old expedition leader from Cumbria has been arrested in Nepal for allegedly doctoring images Mount Everest’s legendary Hillary Step, and posting them on Facebook.
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It’s been a while since we did our last interview on the Footsteps on the Mountain blog, but I can promise you this one has been worth waiting for. Earlier this week we caught up with a man who raised a few eyebrows by announcing the shortest ever 8000m peak expedition.
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I believe that as long as you don’t turn away from life’s problems, there is nothing wrong with escaping them from time to time. I have two main ways of doing this: with mountains and comedy. My parting gift for 2016 is this video, where both come together.
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The Manaslu Circuit is one of the success stories of regeneration after the earthquake, with locals quick to repair bridges and trails. One of my abiding memories of the trek was the sheer number of bridges. For bridge lovers, this blog post is pure porn.
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Last year fifteen million people, a quarter of the population of Britain, watched the final of a cake-baking competition. In 1967 the same number watched a live broadcast of the second ascent of an obscure sea stack off the coast of Orkney.
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Have you ever been so exhausted on a mountain that you wish you could crawl back down? I’ve been there and written a book about it. But which mountains provided the hardest physical challenge? Here are my top five.
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Today’s Everest climbers are often compared unfavourably with the heroic expeditions of the past. But are we so very different from our predecessors? In today’s post I profile an infamous expedition from 1972 that was dogged by controversy.
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