pakistan

An obscure subject for a blog post if ever there was one, but one of the perks of writing a mountaineering blog is every so often I get asked some very obscure and intriguing questions by email out of the

No, the title of this post is not a euphemism, but a reference to the similarities between one of the great mountaineering survival stories, Joe Simpson’s Touching the Void, and another less well-known survival story which happened in the Pakistan

With the news last week that Sandy Allan and Rick Allen have completed the Mazeno Ridge on Nanga Parbat (8125m), the longest continuous ridge on any 8000 metre peak, I was reminded of the colourful history of this giant mountain in Pakistan, the most westerly of the 8000ers, once considered to be a German mountain, and now at least temporarily dressed in tartan.

So you’ve done a few high altitude mountaineering expeditions and you’re ready to climb your first 8000 metre peak, but there are many options and companies offering their services at a bewildering disparity of prices. How do you tell them

I’d been climbing for several years before I dared to call myself a mountaineer. I suddenly realised it one evening a couple of years ago when I got introduced to someone down a pub with the words, “here’s my friend

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

The photograph below was taken just beneath the Kang La pass in the Annapurna region of Nepal, and shows practically the entire northern sweep of the Annapurna range from Annapurna II on the left to Tilicho Peak on the right.

The environmental cost of mountaineering expeditions Base camp on the east side of Baruntse, Nepal, is one of the most breathtaking settings you’re ever likely to come across. Hemmed in by rock walls on two sides, to the west the

Is it OK for mountaineers to miss a puja?

Touching Doug Scott’s void: a crawl down The Ogre

A short history of Nanga Parbat, the Naked German Mountain

How to choose an 8000m peak expedition company

What’s the definition of a mountaineer?

The Krakauer Syndrome

Is this the finest view in the Himalayas?

Turning mountains into trash heaps