Everest and COVID-19: climbers and operators need to come clean

May 4, 2021 Opinion and advice alan arnette, commercial mountaineering, everest, explorersweb, global health, kenton cool, nepal, nirmal purja 16 Comments

We know that climbers and Sherpas have been flown out of Everest Base Camp with COVID-19, but we don’t know the extent of the outbreak. All climbers and operators need to take a hard look at 2021 and decide if the positives of their impact outweigh the negatives.

Ojos del Salado and the Puña de Atacama: the videos

April 29, 2020 Trip reports andes, cerro vicunas, chile, explorersweb, jagged globe, mountain films, ojos del salado, puna de atacama, south america, trekking, volcanoes 0 Comment

It takes me so long to get round to editing my videos these days that I know some of you die of excitement waiting for the next one to appear. Lockdown has provided me with a window of opportunity and I’m hurtling though them like a snail. Here, finally, are the videos of my trip to Ojos del Salado a year and a half ago.

Nirmal Purja’s ascent of all fourteen 8,000m peaks: why is it controversial?

November 6, 2019 Opinion and advice 8000m peaks, explorersweb, first ascents, himalayan database, kim chang-ho, media sensationalism, mountaineering ethics, nepal, nirmal purja, peak bagging, reinhold messner, seven summits treks, sherpas

Last week was one of those weeks when a mountaineering story is so big that it makes it into the popular press. On the face of it, it was a straightforward story of someone smashing a record to smithereens. But if you dig a little deeper, there is another side to it.

An introduction to ExplorersWeb, the adventurers’ website on a new journey

October 17, 2018 Good causes exploration, explorersweb, gasherbrum, interviews, phil crampton, rowan white 1 Comment

ExplorersWeb has been one of the leading sources of news about adventurous expeditions for many years now. But as they say in the pub trade, it’s now under new management. This means that some important changes are taking place. There is a new team of editors and a new design, but this is just the start.

Following the Everesters

April 24, 2013 Opinion and advice 8000m peaks, alan arnette, altitude junkies, blogging, commercial mountaineering, digi comms, edita, everest, explorersweb, grant rawlinson, margaret watroba, phil crampton, sherpas, the chomolungma diaries 15 Comments

This time last year I was lying in a tent on the north side of Everest, listening to a deafening wind pound against the nylon beside my head. Every spring a few hundred people seek to share my experience by trying to climb Everest, and thanks to the miracle of modern communications, it’s possible to watch from the sidelines.

Dispatches from Everest

April 7, 2012 Expedition dispatches alan arnette, altitude junkies, everest, explorersweb, travel blogging, tumblr post 0 Comment

I leave for Nepal today, from where we’ll drive across the border into Tibet. We should arrive at Everest Base Camp on the north side in about a week’s time. I’ll have a satellite connection at base camp as we

8 useful web tools for expedition base camp

August 16, 2011 Opinion and advice 8000m peaks, altitude junkies, blogging, digi comms, everest, explorersweb, facebook, gasherbrum, himalayas, hootsuite, phil crampton, rss feeds, twitter, web tools, wordpress 1 Comment

Well, it’s nearly that time of year again when I escape from the real world to spend a couple of months in a tent on the side of a mountain. At the end of the month I head for the

The Krakauer Syndrome

June 8, 2011 Opinion and advice adventure consultants, anatoli boukreev, explorersweb, false summit claims, gasherbrum, into thin air, jon krakauer, makalu, mountain madness, nepal, old post, pakistan, rob hall, robert anderson, scott fischer, the alpinist

Must there always be blame when a climber dies on a mountain? I was more than a little upset by something I read on a climbing website recently. This had been the intention of the article, but I was annoyed