author, mountaineering writer – books, blog, opinion
If you follow the Everest Today (@EverestToday) account on Twitter, you may be used to seeing the occasional photo of mountains taken from the International Space Station. Mountains look very different from above, and views from the International Space Station are not always recognisable. But this one of Everest is so distinctive that I had to annotate it and share it with you.
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Exciting news! I’m delighted to say that my book Seven Steps from Snowdon to Everest is now available as an audiobook. I’ve been enormously privileged to work with a highly experienced, professional stage and screen actor as my narrator, and I would like to introduce you to him in this post.
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Last week a team of Chinese surveyors climbed Everest and were among only a handful of people to climb it during the coronavirus pandemic. But aren’t we all supposed to be in lockdown? Not all of us, it turns out. I will try to explain.
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One of the side effects of coronavirus lockdown that many people have been talking about is the clarity of the air. Less traffic means less pollution. Nowhere illustrates this better than Nepal’s capital Kathmandu. Last week the Nepali Times posted a photo that purported to show a view of Everest from the city. Could it be true?
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So far I’ve not been finding lockdown too bad. I don’t know whether this makes me unusual. I know I’m lucky in many respects. We have a nice garden beside the river here in the Cotswolds and we’re able to
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Well folks, I have something rather special this week to help stimulate the senses while you are in coronavirus lockdown. Fellow mountain writer John D Burns has featured an audio excerpt from Seven Steps from Snowdon to Everest on his weekly podcast, and it’s great — a dramatic reading of the crux section where I tackle the infamous Second Step.
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There were several hours of mayhem on Everest yesterday when the tracking device of German climber Jurgen Kobblers showed that he had strayed off route into dangerous territory. Rescue parties sprung into action, but in the end it turned out to be a false alarm.
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If, like me, you’ve never wondered why Google don’t feature mountaineers on their daily Google Doodle, then you would have been surprised to open your web browser on Wednesday to find a cartoon line drawing of somebody in a pith helmet tugging on a rope.
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Queues of slow moving traffic, people who don’t know how to drive, human faeces by the side of the road – are we talking about Everest again? No, it’s the North Coast 500, a magnificent road trip in north-west Scotland which I once pedalled round.
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Yes, I know that a number of pedants will read the title of this blog post and mutter under their breaths with a shrug of indignation: ‘What was the highest mountain in the world before Everest was discovered? Why, Everest
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