How many aitches in Machapuchare?

October 29, 2014 History annapurna, history of mountaineering, jimmy roberts, machapuchare, puja, trekking, wilfrid noyce 5 Comments

Machapuchare, the celebrated 6,993m peak in Nepal’s Annapurna range, is often given the ludicrous spelling Machhapuchhare, with two sets of double aitches. This post is all about how to spell the mountain correctly.

What’s the world’s best mountain for cheating?

August 21, 2013 Humour aconcagua, bottled oxygen, denali, douglas freshfield, elbrus, everest, kilimanjaro, machapuchare, mont blanc, mountaineering ethics, pico de orizaba, snowdon, vinson massif, wilfrid noyce 17 Comments

Climbing purists should look away now. This post is for those with a more laid back approach to getting up mountains. I thought it might be interesting to compare some of the world’s high mountains to see how far you can get up them using mechanical transport, and so I give you the Mountains for Cheating infographic.

How to escape from a yeti

August 24, 2011 Humour annapurna, don whillans, eric shipton, everest, frank smythe, garhwal, himalayas, legends and folklore, machapuchare, mountain literature, reinhold messner, sherpas, tibet, travel writing, wildlife, yetis 1 Comment

The great Tyrolean mountaineer Reinhold Messner famously claimed to have seen a yeti when he was camping alone in a clearing in Tibet in 1986. Whatever it was, it moved adeptly on two legs and was too big to be