author, mountaineering writer – books, blog, opinion
Everest’s Deadliest Day was the title of a debate at the RGS in London last week, about the April avalanche and what it meant for the future of Himalayan climbing and the economy of Nepal. Here is my account and thoughts about the event.
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Climbing has as much in common with public speaking as it does with hosting a dinner party. I’ve seen some great lectures by mountaineering legends over the years, but last week I attended a lecture that was about as slick as a mountaineer’s chin after two weeks in an ice cave.
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Britain’s greatest living mountaineer is currently touring the country with a series of lectures about his life, and I was lucky enough to see one of them. An important World Cup qualifier was taking place that evening, but if Chris Bonington’s life were a football match it would be a 22 goal thriller which ended 11 goals all and went into extra time.
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Pete Boardman was only 31 years old when he went missing with his climbing partner Joe Tasker on the Northeast Ridge of Everest in 1982, but already he was a climbing legend who had packed an enormous amount into his short life. He climbed Everest by a new route on the Southwest Face in 1975 at the age of only 24, and the world’s third highest mountain Kangchenjunga also by a new route in 1979.
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No, the title of this post is not a euphemism, but a reference to the similarities between one of the great mountaineering survival stories, Joe Simpson’s Touching the Void, and another less well-known survival story which happened in the Pakistan
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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
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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.
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Here’s the print (complete with apples) of Dougal Haston climbing the Hillary Step, signed by the photographer Doug Scott, that I acquired this time last week at the the Adventure Travel Show, London Olympia. Shortly after the photograph was taken
Read more“Every step was dogged by a presentiment of catastrophe, as if, out of the mists above, a white wave of death would engulf us.” Is it time for a mountaineer to begin questioning his sanity when he reads a book
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