The great Tyrolean mountaineer Reinhold Messner famously claimed to have seen a yeti when he was camping alone in a clearing in Tibet in 1986. Whatever it was, it moved adeptly on two legs and was too big to be
Read moreEric Shipton
All experience is an arch: a traveller’s motto
“All experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move.” Alfred, Lord Tennyson I recently added the above quotation to the main page of my travel photos on this
Read more5 great books about mountain exploration
If you like books about mountaineering, here are some of my favourites. I make no claims that these are the 5 best books about mountain exploration ever written, because I can’t claim to have read them all. They are simply
Read more8 reasons why false summit claims are made
The news that fresh doubts are being cast on the Korean Oh Eun-Sun’s claim to have summitted Kangchenjunga has raised again the spectre of false summit claims among the high altitude mountaineering community. Miss Oh had been engaged in a
Read moreGoddess of Turquoise: my attempt on Cho Oyu
Standing proudly at 8201m (26,906 ft) a few miles west of Everest on the border of Tibet and Nepal, Cho Oyu – whose name translates variously as Bald God or Goddess of Turquoise – is the sixth highest mountain in
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