Mark Horrell's Blog, page 2

My latest audiobook: listen to the sounds of a man spending two months in a tent on a glacier

Over the last few years, I’ve been gradually recording my remaining diaries and releasing them as audiobooks. I’m delighted to say that my latest effort, Thieves, Liars and Mountaineers, will soon be available as an audiobook via all the main channels, including Amazon, Audible, iTunes and Spotify. This is the fifth audiobook that I’ve narrated and produced myself and I’m happy to say that the quality is improving every time.

It’s hard to imagine spending two months in a tent on a glacier, but 1...

The Doctor and the Apprentice: the Jeeves and Wooster of mountaineering literature

A few years ago on this blog, I posed the question Where are the humorous mountaineering books? The general thrust of the post was that while there is no shortage of humour in mountaineering literature, it’s often of the alpha-male kind. This contrasts starkly with the travel genre in general and other niches of sports writing, such as cycling, where gentle, self-deprecatory humour abounds.

Towards the end of last year, I discovered a hidden gem of mountaineering literature quite by chance: a co...

Why xenon and the noble gases have a noble mountaineering pedigree

There has been a lot of controversy in mountaineering circles recently about the noble gas xenon. As reported in the Financial Times, the Austrian mountaineering company Furtenbach Adventures announced that they will be providing their Everest clients with xenon in the belief that it will help them to climb the mountain safely without having to go through the usual acclimatisation process.

Is it going to work or are Furtenbach Adventures taking a huge risk? Has the announcement given xenon (or E...

BREAKING NEWS: Climbers to scale Mount Everest in a weekend by inhaling helium

Every Friday afternoon starting in May, a policeman, two influencers, a government minister and a banker will be sitting at their desks in London with half an eye on their pagers,. If the pagers bleep, they will be ready to jump up and put their trousers on (well, the influencers and the government minister anyway).

This is not because they are worried that the pagers might be sabotaged; they are waiting for a message that could take them on the trip of a lifetime.

Meanwhile, up at Everest Base ...

Christmas in Glen Coe III: the Hillwalk Terminator

Check out this for a summit forecast:

Sunday: Heavy rain, winds 60mph, visibility very poor, temp 3°CMonday: Heavy rain, winds 15mph, visibility very poor, temp 4°CTuesday: Heavy rain, winds 40mph, visibility very poor, temp 5°CWednesday: Light rain, winds 40mph, visibility very poor, temp 5°CThursday: Light rain, winds 20mph, visibility very poor, temp 3°CFriday: Light rain, winds 30mph, visibility very poor, temp 3°CSaturday: Light snow, winds 25mph, visibility poor, temp 1°C

It was th...

The life of John Cleare, the great mountain photographer, as told in comments

I was sad to learn of the death of legendary photographer John Cleare in October this year at the age of 88. He was one of the best known and most respected climbing and mountaineering photographers of the last 50 years.

One of his first commissions was as a cameraman for the Swiss documentary film Matterhorn Centenary in 1965. He was a cameramen on Sir Chris Bonington’s famous BBC live broadcast Old Man of Hoy in 1967, and went on to film Clint Eastwood in the Eiger Sanction in 1974. My copy of...

The great balcony in the clouds: the Tour du Mont Blanc to Chamonix

This is the last of four posts describing our trek around the Tour du Mont Blanc in September, a classic 170km circuit of Western Europe’s highest mountain. After starting out from Chamonix and walking the western section through France, we crossed Italy and Switzerland, and arrived back on the French border at Col de Balme. The story continues from there.

My first night out in Chamonix for 19 years had been a shock. It was mid-September and I expected the mountaineering capital of Western Europ...

A window into the past: the Tour du Mont Blanc from Switzerland to France

This is the third of four posts describing our trek around the Tour du Mont Blanc in September, a classic 170km circuit of Western Europe’s highest mountain. After starting out from Chamonix and walking the western section through France, we crossed Italy and arrived on the Swiss border at Grand Col Ferret. The story continues from there.

In 2003 I was a young slip of a lad who had recently quit his job in search of adventure. I took some time off to go exploring the mountainous regions of the w...

Walter Bonatti’s ferret: the Tour du Mont Blanc from Italy to Switzerland

This is the second of four posts describing our trek around the Tour du Mont Blanc in September, a classic 170km circuit of Western Europe’s highest mountain. After starting out from Chamonix and walking the western section through France, described in my previous post, we arrived on the Italian border at Col de la Seigne. The story continues from there.

In 2015 Edita was living and working in Rome, a two-hour drive from Gran Sasso, a range of dramatic limestone peaks rising above the Adriatic S...

Valleys of mountain joy: the Tour du Mont Blanc from France to Italy

A few years ago I wrote a blog post called ‘What’s next’ in the hope that it would stop people asking the mountaineer’s most frequently asked question (spoiler: it’s all about the journey, not the destination).

It may have worked, because I don’t get asked that question so much any more (or perhaps they just think – with some justification – that I’m clearly past my peak). However, there’s another question I’m sometimes asked by people I haven’t seen for a while that’s equally difficult to answe...