7 summits club

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.

Photographs of members of the Russian 7 Summits Club playing pool at base camp on Everest’s north side will have raised the blood pressure of a few purists who believe such luxuries have no place in mountaineering, but a bit of pampering at base camp has long been a part of expeditions to the 8000m peaks.

I suspect I’m going to shock a few people with this post. During my ascent of Elbrus, the highest mountain in Europe, last month I took not only performance enhancing drugs (aspirin, diamox and — I’m told — Russian vodka) but a cable car, a chairlift and, most shocking of all, a snow cat (that’s a tracked vehicle, not a clawed feline).

When I crept into Everest Base Camp on 22 May and posted some messages to say I’d reached the summit and was safely back down again, I was overwhelmed at the response I received, from close friends, to people I’ve

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