Should you get a refund if your Everest expedition ends early?

November 4, 2020 Opinion and advice 8000m peaks, commercial mountaineering, everest, jagged globe, madison mountaineering, mountain hardwear, nepal earthquake, simon lowe, sir ranulph fiennes 11 Comments

A case is currently passing through the US legal system that may have immediate implications for Everest expedition operators, and wider implications for guided mountaineering in general. Here’s my take on it.

10 facts about Everest success and death rates, based on scientific data

September 2, 2020 Opinion and advice alan arnette, climbing fatalities, commercial mountaineering, everest, himalayan database, media sensationalism, seven steps from snowdon to everest 13 Comments

How much does overcrowding, experience, age and sex affect how likely a climber is to reach the summit of Everest or die trying? A scientific paper was published last week that addressed these very questions. So what did it conclude?

What mountain summit has the world’s longest view?

July 29, 2020 Opinion and advice kilimanjaro, kunlun mountains, kyrgyzstan, mount kenya, pik dankova, tien shan mountains, tristan gooley 10 Comments

I’ve recently been reading The Walker’s Guide to Outdoor Clues & Signs by the unusually named Tristan Gooley. It’s an excellent book that will cause you to look at nature in a different light (to paraphrase climbing writer Jim Perrin

What does Mount Everest look like from space?

July 15, 2020 Opinion and advice everest, george mallory, international space station, island peak, lhotse, mountain photography, mountains from space, nepal, nuptse, tibet 3 Comments

If you follow the Everest Today (@EverestToday) account on Twitter, you may be used to seeing the occasional photo of mountains taken from the International Space Station. Mountains look very different from above, and views from the International Space Station are not always recognisable. But this one of Everest is so distinctive that I had to annotate it and share it with you.

Why did a Chinese team climb Everest during the coronavirus pandemic?

June 3, 2020 Opinion and advice china, everest, global health, nepal, records, tibet, yarla shampo expeditions 8 Comments

Last week a team of Chinese surveyors climbed Everest and were among only a handful of people to climb it during the coronavirus pandemic. But aren’t we all supposed to be in lockdown? Not all of us, it turns out. I will try to explain.

Can you really see Mount Everest from Kathmandu?

May 20, 2020 Opinion and advice everest, ganesh himal, global health, himalayas, kathmandu, langtang lirung, nepal, nepali times 17 Comments

One of the side effects of coronavirus lockdown that many people have been talking about is the clarity of the air. Less traffic means less pollution. Nowhere illustrates this better than Nepal’s capital Kathmandu. Last week the Nepali Times posted a photo that purported to show a view of Everest from the city. Could it be true?

Much ado about yetis: Nepal’s latest tourism blunder

February 26, 2020 Opinion and advice bruce chatwin, jon krakauer, legends and folklore, nepal, reinhold messner, tourism, wildlife, yetis 0 Comment

Nepal’s flagship tourism initiative Visit Nepal 2020 got off to a flying start when 20 yeti statues were removed by tourism officials because they didn’t look anything like yetis. But was this fair and does anyone know what a yeti looks like anyway?

The true summit of Manaslu: a long-standing mystery solved

February 5, 2020 Opinion and advice 8000m peaks, eberhard jurgalski, manaslu, nepal, stefan nestler, summit tolerance zones, toshio imanishi 4 Comments

A few days ago, a reader sent me the following video of a man climbing up a steep bank of snow, reaching the top and seeing two summits beyond. The video was a bit of an eye-opener for me, and solved a mystery that has been bugging me for several years.

Nirmal Purja’s ascent of all fourteen 8,000m peaks: why is it controversial?

November 6, 2019 Opinion and advice 8000m peaks, explorersweb, first ascents, himalayan database, kim chang-ho, media sensationalism, mountaineering ethics, nepal, nirmal purja, peak bagging, reinhold messner, seven summits treks, sherpas 26 Comments

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.

Quilotoa: the easiest way in Ecuador to look into a volcanic crater?

October 10, 2019 Opinion and advice andes, ecuador, jean-baptiste boussingault, llanganates mountains, quilotoa, volcanoes 0 Comment

Ecuador has some impressive volcanic craters. Some, such as Cotopaxi and Tungurahua – both of which I’m going to talk about later – take a bit of effort to get to. But first, a more relaxing interlude. Not all volcanoes

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