author, mountaineering writer – books, blog, opinion
When Belmore Browne and Herschel Parker had to turn around just 50m short of the summit of Denali during a storm in 1912, it would have been hard for them to imagine there could be any consolation in such bad luck. But sometimes the mountain is trying to tell you something, and when that happens it’s always worth listening.
Read more
If everything goes to plan then by the time you read this I’ll be freezing my nuts off on a glacier in Alaska. In January my friend Dan and I decided we would book to climb Denali, the highest mountain in North America, also known as Mount McKinley.
Read more
The most talked about subject in Britain at the moment isn’t the upcoming London Olympics, but the crap weather we’ve been having. First it was the wettest April on record, then it was the wettest May on record. I happened
Read more
The waiting, the resting and the acclimatisation is over. Tomorrow we move up to Advanced Base Camp (ABC) to get ourselves in position for our summit push. Our exact schedule is not yet confirmed as there still remain a few
Read more
Apart from the occasional brief hour of silence, I can’t remember the last time I didn’t have to listen to the roar of the wind. Here at Base Camp it manifests itself in the form tent canvas bashing against our
Read more
The photograph on the wall in the farmhouse at La Esperanza where we stayed the night had been taken 15 years ago, but it looked very different from the place we had walked through earlier in the day. I use
Read more
The story of Manaslu, autumn 2011 Sir Ranulph Fiennes eventually reached the summit of Everest on his third attempt. After suffering a heart attack during his first one in 2005, turning back with exhaustion during his second in 2008, and
Read more
The last day at Manaslu Base Camp before our summit push. Although our acclimatisation schedule has been quite aggressive, a reasonably benign weather window has appeared which we need to take advantage of. We leave for Camp 1 tomorrow (23rd)
Read more
There are times when you pick the wrong option, and just have to shrug your shoulders with no regret. Last weekend was a bit like that for me. While the rest of the UK was enjoying glorious sunshine, I found
Read more
I’m going to conclude my trio of posts about Bhutan by relating an incident that happened at a place called Jangothang on the Jhomolhari trek. In previous posts I’ve been moaning about the weather in Bhutan, and how the beautiful
Read more