author, mountaineering writer – books, blog, opinion
Many teams climbed the north side of Everest this season, but two seemed to get the lion’s share of the attention. These two teams were using new techniques to shorten their expeditions. But was their approach sensible or effective? Let’s have a look.
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It was a slow news week over the Christmas period, and the mainstream media fell for the Everest silly announcement hoax for the umpteenth time. This particular stunt happens roughly once a year, and the process is described here.
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Earlier this week a fundraising appeal for Sange, a 19-year-old Sherpa who suffered severe frostbite on Everest this year, reached its ambitious target of $42,000.
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Every year people show up at Everest Base Camp, believing they can climb the mountain with very little experience. Every year they get reported in the media, and more people believe that climbing Everest must be easy. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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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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In this era of fake news, the BBC has launched a Reality Check series to analyse popular news stories that sound plausible and assess whether or not they’re bollocks. I thought it might be fun to run one the BBC’s own stories through a reality check.
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There was another big controversy on Manaslu this year. It was widely reported that record numbers reached the summit, but it now appears that a problem with the rope fixing meant that the majority didn’t reach the main summit at all, but one of the two foresummits.
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The American operator Alpenglow is pioneering a new approach to Himalayan mountaineering with its Rapid Ascent trips. These expeditions are unaffordable to most ordinary people, but I believe it won’t be long before cheaper operators follow suit.
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Last week The Economist published an article about why Everest is dangerous, without mentioning avalanches, rockfall, crevasses, precipitous terrain, oxygen deprivation, altitude sickness, exhaustion, exposure, extreme temperatures, frostbite, storms or murderous jetstream winds.
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We hear many stories of blame on Everest, but rarely stories of heroism. This isn’t because they don’t exist, but because the media prefer to focus on the negative. In this week’s post I do my bit to rectify this with the help of an old friend.
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