8000m peaks

Book review: Abode of Snow by Kenneth Mason and Fallen Giants by Isserman & Weaver. It’s always interesting to read two books which cover the same subject 50 years apart. It’s even more interesting when that subject is Himalayan mountaineering, one very close to my heart. In the last couple of months I’ve read an epic modern work and an old classic.

If you read the title of this post and think I’m about to slag off the Swiss climbing superstar, famous for his speed ascents in the Alps and Himalayas, then you should know upfront that I’ll be doing precisely the

When my mate Dan asked me if I wanted to go and see Joe Brown talk about the first ascent of Kangchenjunga, I didn’t even realise he was still alive (Joe Brown that is, not Dan). There aren’t many climbers

It made me very sad to hear about the last fatality on Manaslu this year before the weather closed in and the Himalayan climbing season ended for the winter. Eleven people had already died in a huge avalanche on the

I don’t know too much about the organisation Kickstarter, so I hesitate to be too critical about them, but this morning an item appeared in my Twitter feed about a campaign of theirs which appeared to be taking bad taste

It’s not always wise or worthwhile to respond to a rant, but occasionally something you hold dear is attacked so mercilessly that you can’t help yourself. There’s been quite a lot of nonsense published about last month’s avalanche on Manaslu,

Four months after an unusually deadly Everest season, another tragedy in the Himalayas has focused the attention of the world’s media on the sport of high altitude mountaineering. Because mainstream media only seems interested in mountaineering in the event of

As Martin Luther King once said, “I have a dream”. Mine perhaps isn’t quite as worthy as his, but in its own way it’s just as heartfelt. I dream that one day everyone who climbs Everest will enjoy it, not just for the climb itself, but the whole experience of being in the mountains.

I’ve been fascinated by the legend of George Mallory, and whether he was the first person to climb Everest, since long before I became a mountaineer. Many years and many mountains later I finally had the chance to follow in

With the news last week that Sandy Allan and Rick Allen have completed the Mazeno Ridge on Nanga Parbat (8125m), the longest continuous ridge on any 8000 metre peak, I was reminded of the colourful history of this giant mountain in Pakistan, the most westerly of the 8000ers, once considered to be a German mountain, and now at least temporarily dressed in tartan.

Two great histories of Himalayan mountaineering

Ueli Steck’s ridiculous mountaineering career

Joe Brown provides a rare glimpse of Kangchenjunga

In memory of Victor Correa of Guican

Hi Kickstarters, but this is wrong in so many ways

In defence of Manaslu (and commercial mountaineering)

The Manaslu avalanche: a short analysis

The people who give Everest a bad name

What climbing Everest taught me about George Mallory’s final hours

A short history of Nanga Parbat, the Naked German Mountain