pete boardman

I’ve recently been reading The Everest Years by Chris Bonington, during which he states that he was the 7th Brit to climb Everest. So who were the 7 and what were their stories?

By the time you read this I will be somewhere in the Kangchenjunga region of Nepal, in the far east of the country near its eastern border with India. It’s a region dominated by one huge mountain, 8,586m Kangchenjunga, the third-highest mountain in the world.

There has been a lot of gushing editorial written recently to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first American ascent of Everest in 1963. I could write a bit more about the expedition here, but I wouldn’t be adding anything to what’s already out there. Instead I’m going to talk about another expedition which took place on Everest’s north side three years earlier.

Pete Boardman was only 31 years old when he went missing with his climbing partner Joe Tasker on the Northeast Ridge of Everest in 1982, but already he was a climbing legend who had packed an enormous amount into his short life. He climbed Everest by a new route on the Southwest Face in 1975 at the age of only 24, and the world’s third highest mountain Kangchenjunga also by a new route in 1979.

Book review: Dark Summit by Nick Heil and High Crimes by Michael Kodas “There’s three things that could happen: you could fail, you could get up it, or you could not come back. You’ll just have to make sure you

An apology in advance: it’s going to be a philosophical post today instead of the usual waffle. It’s been another clear day at base camp, apart from the distinctive plume of cloud blasting off the summit. I wandered up a

“Every step was dogged by a presentiment of catastrophe, as if, out of the mists above, a white wave of death would engulf us.” Is it time for a mountaineer to begin questioning his sanity when he reads a book

The first 7 British people to climb Mount Everest

My first visit to Kangchenjunga

Did Chinese climbers reach the summit of Everest in 1960?

Book review: Sacred Summits by Pete Boardman

5 Everest horror stories

Everest Base Camp memorials

Book review: Savage Arena by Joe Tasker