8000m peaks

I’m happy to say that the next instalment of my diaries, The Everest Politics Show, is now available on Audible, Amazon and Apple Books, and will be available on other outlets such as Spotify very soon.

I’ve lost count of the expedition accounts where the hardest route to the top is the only one worth considering, or where stronger climbers are cast as heroes and weaker ones clowns. All of these accounts were written by men, so it’s always refreshing to read a woman’s perspective.

Yes, that’s right. A sensational headline, I know, but it’s absolutely true. Not only did I climb an 8,000m peak, but over the last few months, I’ve been producing an audiobook about it, The Manaslu Adventure, from our little cottage in the Cotswolds.

On Saturday 30 September, 2006, foreign climbers at Cho Oyu Base Camp in Tibet watched a line of around 70 local people zigzag up a steep snow slope a short distance away from their tents. They were about to witness something that would become headline news across the world.

There have been rumours in the mountaineering world for a few years now that all the records about ascents of the world’s fourteen 8,000m peaks might need to be rewritten, including whether the great Reinhold Messner was first to climb them all.

There is currently an unmissable 1 hr 45 min documentary film, The Last Mountain, available on BBC iPlayer for the next year. The film follows the last climb of elite mountaineer Tom Ballard, who died on Nanga Parbat in 2019.

Last week a commercial group from mountaineering operator Imagine Nepal made an historic ascent of 8,163m Manaslu. One of the climbers took some drone photographs that help to set the record straight about Manaslu’s myriad summits.

I know some people found my previous post a bit heavy. So to cheer everyone up at the end of a dark season in difficult times, and to prove that this isn’t just another serious climbing blog, here’s something a little more light-hearted.

It’s not very often that the ascent of an 8,000m peak makes international news headlines, but earlier this month something rather special happened when a team of 10 Nepali climbers stood on the summit of K2.

A case is currently passing through the US legal system that may have immediate implications for Everest expedition operators, and wider implications for guided mountaineering in general. Here’s my take on it.

My latest audiobook: The Everest Politics Show — an eyewitness account of the 2014 Everest tragedy

The most shocking first page in mountaineering literature

First British man to climb Manaslu then narrate an audiobook about it from a converted stable in the Cotswolds

Murder on the Nangpa La: why the 2006 Cho Oyu shooting should be remembered

If Reinhold Messner wasn’t the first person to climb all the 8,000m peaks, who was?

Review: The Last Mountain — the last days of Tom Ballard

Amazing drone photos of the summit of Manaslu help to set the record straight

10 high-altitude mountaineering lookalikes

Is the first winter ascent of K2 a turning point for Sherpa mountaineers?

Should you get a refund if your Everest expedition ends early?