Mark Horrell's Blog, page 17

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...

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...

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 1

Watch...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Paperback of Feet and Wheels to Chimborazo: the perfect gift to slip inside your Christmas stocking

‘Every once in a lifetime, a book comes along that is so outrageously witty that you have to wear a corset to avoid splitting your sides with laughter. Feet and Wheels to Chimborazo is just such a book,’ said my dad – who, I should point out, does not enjoy wearing corsets.

I know what you’re thinking: he’s my father, so he would say that, wouldn’t he. This may be true, but he said this (or something like it) in spite of the joke I made at his expense towards the end of the book.

This is my proof copy of Feet and Wheels to Chi...

Monte Amaro up the backside: a bittersweet ascent in the Apennines

Welcome to this, the second in my series of Apennine ‘up the backside’ posts, so called because I tackle the mountain from the opposite of its usual side. I have previously talked about an ascent of Monte Marsicano via its rear passage. In this week’s post I tackle Monte Amaro (2,793m), the second highest peak in the Apennines.

In Italian, Monte is not a gentleman’s name but the short form of the word ‘mountain’, used in much the same way as we use ‘Mount’ in English, by appending it to the front of the name to indicate...

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

Every so often a story emerges in the world of mountaineering that is so big that it makes it into the popular press alongside stories about Brexit, Brexit and even Brexit. Last week was one of those weeks.

A Nepali climber and former soldier in the Gurkha regiment of the British Army called Nirmal Purja completed his quest to climb all fourteen of the world’s 8,000m peaks in the staggeringly quick time of 189 days. He called his challenge ‘Project Possible’, and it was staggering because the previous record for climbing all f...