In praise of Cumbria’s northern fells

May 5, 2011 Trip reports britain, camping, carrock fell, cumbria, fairfield, great dodd, helvellyn, hill walking, lake district, langdale, navigation, pennines, scafell pike, skiddaw, st sunday crag, striding edge, stybarrow dodd, wild camping, wilderness 5 Comments

I’m going to say something that I don’t believe many people say: some of my favourite hills in the English Lake District are the rolling grassy bogland hillsides of its northern fells. There are some impressive looking mountains in the

The joys and perils of off-piste walking

April 27, 2011 Trip reports arrochar alps, beinn ime, beinn narnain, ben vane, ben vorlich, britain, cameron mcneish, hill walking, loch lomond, munro bagging, munros, navigation, off piste walking, old post, public footpaths, rights of way, scotland, scottish highlands, scottish rights of way society, walking guides 4 Comments

While sitting in my tent the other morning deciding which Scottish mountain to tackle that day, I came across a couple of passages in Cameron McNeish’s book The Munros which struck me as out of place. “It’s interesting that the

A weekend escape to the Brecon Beacons

April 12, 2011 Trip reports brecon beacons, britain, camping, cribyn, facebook, fan y big, hill walking, pen y fan 4 Comments

Joking aside, I think the view up Fan y Big must be about the best in the Brecon Beacons, looking back across the cwm to Cribyn, with Pen y Fan, the highest mountain in South Wales, behind it. It was

Aconcagua: when returning is better in every way

January 8, 2011 Trip reports aconcagua, andes, argentina, augusto ortega, aventuras patagonicas, jagged globe, ojos del salado, polish glacier, seven summits 7 Comments

Yesterday I returned to the UK again after a short visit to Argentina, and am surprised not to see any snow. Since August, when I left for Cho Oyu in Tibet, it seems that barely a week has passed when

Cho Oyu 2010: Climbing high on steak and kidney pie

November 28, 2010 Trip reports 8000m peaks, acclimatisation, altitude sickness, cho oyu, everest, expedition food, himalayas, jagged globe, kathmandu, lhasa, manaslu, nepal, potala palace, shegar, shigatse, tibet, tibetan mountaineering association 7 Comments

The story of Cho Oyu, autumn 2010 While we live in a society which offers us a huge amount of choice over what we do, for the bigger events the wheel of life more often than not turns in a

Baruntse post mortem: bad luck or bad decision-making?

November 14, 2010 Trip reports 8000m peaks, adventure peaks, baruntse, chewang nima sherpa, cho oyu, everest, false summit claims, frostbite, karakoram, kathmandu, lukla, mark dickson, nepal, sandy allan, summitclimb 4 Comments

Mountaineering can be a frustrating business and exceptional weather conditions across the Karakoram and Himalayas has made this year one of the most frustrating in recent times for high altitude climbers, with a hugely reduced number of summits on all