author, mountaineering writer – books, blog, opinion
When I first became aware of a crowdfunded appeal to search for two climbers who had been missing for days on a remote peak in Pakistan, my immediate impression was that it was both desperate and futile. Not everyone saw it that way, and what happened next was remarkable.
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There are not many films about mountaineering that tackle questions about risk and death by trying to understand rather than by being evasive or dismissive. It’s a dark and poignant film, but it’s also thought-provoking and worth watching for its interesting characters.
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While surfing YouTube the other day, feeling nostalgic for the mountains of Africa, I stumbled across David Breashears’ 2002 IMAX documentary Kilimanjaro: To the Roof of Africa. It was an enjoyable film which had me yearning to go back.
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We hear many stories of blame on Everest, but rarely stories of heroism. This isn’t because they don’t exist, but because the media prefer to focus on the negative. In this week’s post I do my bit to rectify this with the help of an old friend.
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Andrew Lock was the first Australian to climb all fourteen 8000m peaks. I agree with Sir Chris Bonington: his book is honest, gritty and riveting. It’s also refreshing and humorous in places, and well worth a read if you can get your hands on a copy.
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Abode of the Gods by Kev Reynolds can best be described as an edited journal covering eight treks in different parts of Nepal over a 23-year period. It is the best tribute anyone could pen to a country that has become their second home.
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I expect not too many people have found themselves in a movie theatre watching a two-hour film about a real life drama for which they have been an eyewitness. In December I had that experience for the first, and perhaps the only, time in my life.
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K2’s history has been covered in depth in a number of well-known books, so why another one? The reason I wanted to read this one was because I very much enjoyed reading Mick Conefrey’s other mountaineering history about the 1953 Everest expedition.
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On 24 September 1975, Doug Scott and Dougal Haston became the first two Brits to reach the summit of Everest, by a new route on the Southwest Face. Forty years later, on 24 September 2015, I had the privilege of hearing all about it from members of their team.
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They’ve just released a big-budget film about the 1996 Everest tragedy, which I went to see at the BFI IMAX in London earlier this week. I was expecting to hate it, but although I had some reservations, I ended up really enjoying it.
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