altitude junkies

With the cities of York and Leicester engaged in an unseemly tug-of-war for the bones of King Richard III, I can exclusively reveal the city of New York has entered the contest to inter the corpse of the former English monarch, who died at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485.

It’s not always wise or worthwhile to respond to a rant, but occasionally something you hold dear is attacked so mercilessly that you can’t help yourself. There’s been quite a lot of nonsense published about last month’s avalanche on Manaslu,

Huge congratulations to the 15 members of the Altitude Junkies team (6 clients, 8 Sherpas and expedition leader Phil Crampton) who have just returned safely to Samagaon after summiting Manaslu on Monday. Ten days ago they were lying in their

Four months after an unusually deadly Everest season, another tragedy in the Himalayas has focused the attention of the world’s media on the sport of high altitude mountaineering. Because mainstream media only seems interested in mountaineering in the event of

“We’re a couple of high-altitude junkies.” Pete Boardman This is a follow up to last week’s post about choosing an 8000 metre peak expedition operator. In that post I offered up some pointers to help you make the right choice

The story of the 2012 Altitude Junkies expedition to climb Everest by the North Ridge Sometimes you get lucky in life, and everything just seems to fall into place like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. These times are rare and

This is a short post briefly describing our successful ascent of Everest by the North Ridge on Saturday 19 May. I’ll describe it in more depth in a later post, once I’ve recovered from summit exhaustion and had more time

Very soon we’ll be starting out on our Everest summit push. All our preparations have been done, and from now on it’s just one foot in front of the other; the rest is in the hands of the mountain gods.

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

The route up from Advanced Base Camp (ABC) to the North Col of Everest, up the North Col Wall, differs from year to year. It’s been scene of some famous accidents. The end of George Mallory’s 1922 expedition came abruptly

Is the mountaineer Phil Crampton Richard III’s distant relative?

In defence of Manaslu (and commercial mountaineering)

Altitude Junkies summit Manaslu

The Manaslu avalanche: a short analysis

Why Altitude Junkies is my choice for the 8000m peaks

Everest 2012: Climbing and alcohol

The world’s most terrifying ridge walk

With a little help from my friends

The Everest weather window

The North Col and the Ladder of Death