author, mountaineering writer – books, blog, opinion
After two major tragedies on Everest in the last two years, which generated worldwide media interest, I have found myself reading increasingly violent reports, with explicit descriptions of injuries and upsetting photographs.
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Last year I was on my way into the Khumbu Icefall on Everest, and watched in horror as a huge avalanche took the lives of sixteen Sherpas. This year I watched from a distance as an earthquake put that event into perspective. Here is my personal account of witnessing both tragedies.
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Recently I wrote a satirical piece about a fictional washroom at Everest Base Camp as a reaction to more sensationalised media reporting about Everest. But the reports contained a grain of truth that I intend to fertilise in this post.
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There is now so much human excrement on Mount Everest experts predict that by 2015 it will reach the Moon. Luckily Nepal’s government has announced it will be building a new state-of-the-art toilet at Everest Base Camp.
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It was silly season in the media again last week, when the BBC latched onto another Everest story. But while the media were busy having their usual feeding frenzy, expedition operators didn’t help by squabbling among themselves.
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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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Now that we’re beginning to understand what happened on Everest this year a little better, more recent articles on the subject seem to be more moderate in their approach. I thought it would be a good time to examine some of the things I’ve read more recently.
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One thing every Everest climber has to get used to is hate written about them in the media. Sometimes the hate becomes so pervasive that it starts to resemble propaganda, and one particularly corrosive piece of propaganda concerning Everest has been cited frequently recently and needs to be challenged.
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With vicars treated like lapdogs by cretinous narcissists, a crisis in church matrimony was inevitable. This week on the Footsteps of the Mountain blog we welcome Tony Gould as our special guest blogger, who will be talking knowledgeably about one of his favourite topics, marriage and road traffic accidents.
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The government of Nepal made a number of announcements about mountaineering on Everest before and during the Spring 2014 season, which received widespread media attention. Here I examine some of the announcements and assess how successfully the government met their intentions.
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