Mark Horrell's Blog, page 16
February 5, 2020
The true summit of Manaslu: a long-standing mystery solved
A few days ago, a reader sent me the following video of a man climbing up a steep bank of snow, reaching the top and seeing two summits beyond. The video was a bit of an eye-opener for me, and solved a mystery that has been bugging me for several years.
The video was of a Japanese climber reaching the summit of Manaslu in 2013, then crouching down on top while his teammate took his summit photo.
Except, he didn’t reach the actual summit. As you can clearly see in the video,...
January 29, 2020
The tragedy of Armero: the 1985 eruption of Nevado del Ruiz
Today I’m going to tell you a moving story that I stumbled across while researching the mountains of Los Nevados after my trip to Colombia over the new year. It concerns a 13-year old girl called Omayra Sanchez whose plight came to worldwide attention following the eruption of Nevado del Ruiz in 1985.
Nevado del Ruiz (5,325m) is an active volcano in Colombia’s Cordillera Central mountain range, and the highest mountain in Los Nevados National Park. At the time of my visit, it was sufficiently...
January 22, 2020
Los Nevados: exploring the volcanoes of Colombia’s Cordillera Central
Eight years ago I visited Colombia to trek the Cocuy Circuit in the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy mountain range and climb its highest peak, 5,410m Ritacuba Blanco. It was one of the most beautiful, remote and unusual treks I have completed, but the climb was fairly ordinary. The Cocuy is a rock climber’s paradise, but as far as alpine climbing is concerned the glaciers are receding faster than my hairline, and the ascent was little more than a modest snow plod.
I hoped that one day I would return...
January 15, 2020
How the Colombian páramo thwarted the Spanish conquistadors
The story I’m about to tell might be total bollocks, but it’s a funny story, so I’m going to tell it anyway. It was told to us by one of our guides as we trekked through the páramo landscape of Colombia last month.
The páramo is a high-altitude ecosystem found between 3,000 and 4,500m in just five countries in Latin America: Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica. It is characterised by long, wet tussock grass (known locally as paja), lakes, peat bogs and a number of unusual...
January 8, 2020
Why I’m not a big fan of rock climbing
We crossed the glacier at the head of the valley in no time, aiming for a gap in the rock where the ice spilled down from a higher plateau. As we passed through this gap to the upper reaches of the glacier, we began to see the cities and lowlands far beneath us, masked by the blanket of thin cloud that we had climbed through. Closer at hand, the páramo landscape was speckled with shimmering lakes. It was magnificent – a view to capture the imagination, and I wished that I could walk there for...
December 21, 2019
The five days of Colombia’s Cocuy Circuit trek in video
I’m currently hiking in Los Nevados National Park, in the Cordillera Central, the middle of the three parallel belts of mountains that span the Colombian Andes from north to south.
I hope it’s going to be as good as last time I came, when I hiked the Cocuy Circuit trek in the Cordillera Oriental, the eastern range. To whet your appetite for this beautiful country, here are five videos covering all five days of the trek I completed in 2011
The smiles in these videos tell it all.
Day 1December 18, 2019
A return to the mountains of Colombia, with a volcanic twist
Eight years ago I travelled to Colombia to visit the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy region, an area that my Lonely Planet guidebook had enthused about:
This gorgeous slice of heaven on Earth has some of Colombia’s most dramatic landscapes, from snow-capped mountains and raging waterfalls to icy glaciers and crystal-clear blue lakes. Lonely Planet Guide to Colombia
Gushing as this may be, it proved to be accurate enough. The Cocuy Circuit was only a five-day trek, but it was one of the most enjoyable...
December 11, 2019
Climbing Cotopaxi: the ‘most beautiful of all the colossal peaks of the Andes’
The crowning glory of Cotopaxi’s summit was not the 360 panorama of isolated volcanoes, but the gigantic crater directly below, a gaping chasm of chocolate-brown rock, framed by a shining ring of snow and ice. Mark Horrell, Feet and Wheels to Chimborazo
Yes, I know. I’m starting this blog post by quoting myself, but why not. In my latest book (published this year and available from all good retailers) I wrote a chapter about Cotopaxi (5,897m), the mountain some people describe as the highest...
December 4, 2019
Review: Touching the Void, on stage in London’s West End
‘What next? A bloody musical?’
Joe Simpson
When a writer makes a comment like this about a stage-play version of his book, then it’s probably going to be a weird play. I have to confess, I raised my eyebrows too.
There aren’t many characters in Joe Simpson’s book Touching the Void, and the main one, Joe Simpson himself, spends most of the story entirely alone, contemplating existence as he crawls for three days along a glacier.
Loneliness and the act of dying alone is one the principal themes...
November 27, 2019
Climbing Tungurahua and entering the throat of fire
The resort town of Baños lies at 1,800m in a deep gorge cutting through the Andes from Ecuador’s central highlands in the west to the Amazon jungle in the east.
As some of you will know, the word baños can often be found written on toilet doors in bars and restaurants across the Spanish speaking world. You may wonder why the town is named after the Spanish word for toilets, until you realise that ‘baños’ is also the word for baths, and the town is actually named after the hot springs that...
