author, mountaineering writer – books, blog, opinion
I climbed Lhakpa Ri on 11 May 2007 as part of a commercial expedition by UK mountaineering operator Jagged Globe. This follow up to my last post about the first ascent by Bill Tilman and Edmund Wigram features an excerpt from my diary describing my own ascent 72 years later.
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I’ve recently finished reading Mount Everest the Reconnaissance 1935 by Tony Astill. The book was interesting to me because it described the first ascent of 7,045m Lhakpa Ri by Bill Tilman and Edmund Wigram, a peak that I climbed myself in 2007.
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Record claims require scrutiny. People talk a lot about whether oxygen should or shouldn’t be used at high altitude. They don’t talk so much about HOW MUCH oxygen is used, and this is absolutely crucial. As someone who used different flow rates of oxygen at different times during my time as a high-altitude mountaineer, I thought I would give you my perspective.
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There are a lot of adjectives in the title of this post. What does it mean, precisely? There was a time in history when neither Everest nor the other 10 highest mountains in the world had been climbed. What was the highest mountain ever climbed back in those days? And what was the one before that? If you’re intrigued to find out then read on
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This is the second of two posts about our recent visit to the mountainous island of Hispaniola. In the first post, I introduced you to the Dominican Republic, and how we came to trek there. In this post, I describe our assault on Pico Duarte (3,101m), La Pelona (3,095m) and La Rusilla (3,040m), the three highest mountains in the Caribbean.
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A Dickson Step is a small step around 5 to 10 centimetres high in a hotel bathroom doorway. The step is designed in such a way to be a trip hazard for unsuspecting guests who get up to relieve themselves during the night.
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Much of the media coverage around Everest this year has focused on a brace of unusual speed ascents that have been framed as a game changer for aspiring Everest climbers. But there was another technological advance that is likely to change the job description for Sherpas much more significantly.
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Standing just 1.65m tall and weighing 82kg, nobody would ever have suspected Babu Chiri of being an athlete if he walked into a bar. But in 1998, he was one of the top three in the world at his specialist event of climbing Everest.
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There have been many books about Sherpa mountaineers over the years, but few have been written from the perspective of Sherpas themselves. One that comes close is Sherpa by Pradeep Bashyal and Ankit Babu Adhikari, which I read recently.
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There’s been some controversy in mountaineering circles about the noble gas xenon after mountaineering operator Furtenbach Adventures announced that they’ll be offering it to their Everest clients. It’s entirely appropriate that somebody has got around to using a noble gas to aid in mountaineering, for reasons I will explain.
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