author, mountaineering writer – books, blog, opinion
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?
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What to do when you spend an evening answering interview questions for a journalist, only for them not to be published? Of course, it’s obvious: publish them yourself on your own blog. So here is the world’s first ever interview with Mark Horrell.
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The problems which occurred on Everest this year are nothing new, but they have now reached such a degree that it’s time for operators who value their reputation and for those who dream of climbing Everest to take a principled stand.
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Last month I examined the practice of climbing Everest in a shorter period of time by acclimatising at home and using larger quantities of oxygen during the climb. In this week’s follow up post, I take a look at the cost of these expeditions.
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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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