Mark Horrell's Blog, page 23

Introduction to the Apennines – Part 4: Sirente-Velino

I was lucky to live and work for a year in Rome, where the highest peaks of the Apennines were accessible within a couple of hours. It was a hill walker’s paradise, with a feast of mountains of great variety, and reliable weather.

Had they been that close to London, those peaks would be crawling with walkers, but this 1,200km chain of mountains that forms the spine of Italy is undiscovered, despite being criss-crossed with hiking trails.

There isn’t much information available in English. We s...

Why do outdoor brands constantly dick around with perfectly good gear?

I have a Rab soft shell jacket that I’m very happy with. It’s warm, light, packs away small, it’s windproof, modestly waterproof and has nice big hand pockets.

There is just one slightly annoying feature. There is no drawstring on the hood, which means the hood tends to billow around like a sail and has a habit of blowing off in the wind. Drawstring hoods are a common feature of windproof jackets, because they allow you tighten up the hood on a windy day.

The jacket has nice big pockets for p...

Peak bagging the Cuillin ridge on Scotland’s Isle of Skye

We arrived at the Old Inn in Carbost, the remote Scottish pub where would be staying that week, at five o’clock on Sunday after a two-day drive from London. The car park was full, but it wasn’t obvious which building beside the shore of the loch was the pub. We found an innocuous door down a dark staircase where a sign pointed “Way Inn”.

Everything changed when we opened the door. The pub was heaving, and we could barely get to the bar and claim our room for the night. A Scottish folk band ca...

The strange life and death of Kim Chang-ho

On 20 May 2013, Kim Chang-ho reached the summit of Everest, becoming the 5th Korean to climb all fourteen of the world’s 8,000m peaks, and the first to climb them all without supplementary oxygen.

He was only the 31st person to climb all the 8,000ers, and there are still just 40. Far more have died trying. Of the 40 to succeed, only 19 have done so without supplementary oxygen. Kim achieved the feat in the shortest time (7 years 10 months, beating the Pole Jerzy Kukuczka’s record of 7 years 1...

An introduction to ExplorersWeb, the adventurers’ website on a new journey

I first heard about ExplorersWeb during my first 8,000m peak expedition to Pakistan in 2009. It didn’t occur to me that the media might be reporting on my movements, but that was essentially what was happening.

I and about 50 other people were climbing Gasherbrum II, and a few of them were live-blogging their expedition dispatches. Reporters from ExplorersWeb were reading the dispatches and posting news about our expeditions on their website.

I try to avoid internet connections when I’m holid...

Banished to Room 101: the Inaccessible Pinnacle

You asked me once, what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.
1984, George Orwell

Probably the most memorable image from the film version of George Orwell’s sci-fi novel, 1984, is the scene where John Hurt has a cage containing two live rats strapped to his face. John Hurt plays the book’s leading character Winston Smith, and Smith had been sent for a session in Room 101, the torture cham...

The first ever successful Everesting of Everest

Everesting: Noun. An endurance challenge performed on a bicycle, where a cyclist repeatedly climbs a single hill until the combined elevation gain reaches 8,848m, the height of Mount Everest.

Earlier this year, I reported an interesting story about a group of cyclists from Australia who tried to complete the first ever Everesting – where a cyclist repeatedly climbs the same hill until they’ve biked the height of Everest – on the side of Everest itself.

The cyclists in question – Andy van Berg...

A return to the Black Cuillin of Skye

From an old tower, near this place, is an extensive view of … the Cuillin, a prodigious range of mountains, capped with rocky pinnacles in a strange variety of shapes. Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, James Boswell

A few years ago I walked into an outdoor shop in Aviemore to buy a rain cover for my Garmin GPS.

‘You don’t need a rain cover for a Garmin GPS,’ said the shop assistant. ‘It’s waterproof.’

‘But I’m going hill walking in the Cairngorms. It’s not likely to be waterproof enough for...

Islands in the Snow is now available as a paperback

Here’s a timely tip if you’re off trekking in Nepal this autumn and are looking for some books to read on the trail (well, not actually on the trail – that could be dangerous, especially if there are yaks coming the other way – but certainly in a teahouse while you’re tucking in to a bottle of Everest beer).

I’ve mentioned previously that I’m in the process of having selected titles from my Footsteps on the Mountain Travel Diaries re-edited and published as revised editions. These revised edi...

7 countries with mountains on their flags

In the course of writing my next book, Chimborazo, I discovered something that I’d never noticed before – that Ecuadorians are so proud of their highest mountain that they’ve put it on their national flag.

This fact got me thinking: is Ecuador the only country with a mountain on its flag? After squinting for half an hour at a database of world flags (that’s the kind of interesting life I lead) I discovered that the answer to this question is a resounding ‘no’.

In fact, there appear to be no f...