author, mountaineering writer – books, blog, opinion
I believe that as long as you don’t turn away from life’s problems, there is nothing wrong with escaping them from time to time. I have two main ways of doing this: with mountains and comedy. My parting gift for 2016 is this video, where both come together.
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I’ve been thinking a lot about Kilimanjaro this year. I first climbed it in 2002, and I was long overdue a return. Back then I didn’t know whether I would be strong enough. This time it should be a different story, and we hope to explore a bit of the crater while we’re up there.
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Last week a new service was launched to help find tourists who have gone missing while trekking in Nepal. MissingTrekker.com is intended to be a database of missing trekkers, but it’s also a comprehensive resource about trekker safety.
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One of the best books about mountaineering ever written, and certainly one of the funniest, was written by a complete novice, who had never climbed in his life when he decided to tackle a remote peak in Afghanistan that had never been climbed before.
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In 2014, the government of Nepal published a list of 104 peaks that were newly open for climbing, unleashing a scramble to make their first ascents. There was just one problem. Some of these peaks had already been climbed before.
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A book by a writer with no publishing company to back him up, who doesn’t give any promotional talks, and whose books have never been reviewed by a single outdoor magazine, was a no.1 bestseller last week. I have you to thank.
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A quick note to let you know that those of you who pre-ordered my latest travel diary from Amazon should receive it on your Kindle tomorrow (24th). If you’ve bought it elsewhere, such as Apple iBooks or Kobo, then you should receive it on Monday, 28th.
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When I watched the documentary Nawang Gombu: The Heart of a Tiger last weekend, it had only been watched 151 times before me. This is ridiculous. It has some flaws, but it deserves to be watched more widely because of its subject matter.
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When I received an email from BBC Top Gear asking me whether I thought it might be possible to drive a vehicle up Chimborazo, my first reaction was to roar with laughter. But after I gave it some consideration I realised it required a better response than that.
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Two of the best mountaineering books ever written were designed to be read side by side, but I wonder if anyone has. I set myself the challenge of reading alternate chapters of The Ascent of Nanda Devi by H.W. Tilman and The Ascent of Rum Doodle by W.E. Bowman.
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