Mark Horrell's Blog, page 27

Chimborazo’s role in proving Newton’s theory of gravity

Climbers can fall off mountains for a variety of reasons. Clumsiness, incompetence, bad luck, shoddy equipment, natural causes or – if you’re Joe Simpson – because somebody above you has cut the rope. But there’s one common cause in every plummet: the law of gravity, discovered in the 1660s (as legend has it) by the British scientist Sir Isaac Newton, after being struck on the head by an apple.

I expect you know this already, but Newton’s law states that bodies attract in proportion to their...

Tomek Mackiewicz and Nanga Parbat: a Shakespearean mountaineering tragedy

Pakistan’s Nanga Parbat (8,125m), the world’s ninth-highest mountain, has had its share of strange tragedies. It was the first 8,000m peak to take a climber’s life in 1895, when Albert Mummery and two Gurkha officers, Ragobir Thapa and Goman Singh, set off to cross the Diamir Gap and were never seen again.

In 1934, nine members of a German expedition, including six Darjeeling Sherpas, died in a harrowing eight-day storm as they retreated down the mountain. In 1937, sixteen members of another...

Chimborazo Sea to Summit Challenge: the videos

Another one for those of you who prefer to watch telly than read books.

It’s that time again, when I show off the latest batch of classy videos that I’ve cobbled together in the garden shed with a pair of scissors, a roll of sellotape, and some sticky-back plastic. These ones cover our Chimborazo Sea to Summit Challenge last autumn, when we climbed 6,310m Chimborazo in Ecuador, starting from sea level on push bikes. Fans of my videos (have another drink, all of you) will be pleased to know th...

Mountain, The Movie: pornography for outdoor folk

You may not know it, but on 11 December every year, the United Nations celebrates International Mountain Day to highlight how climate change, hunger and migration is affecting mountain communities. What the event actually involves, I’m not going to go into here, but you can hop on over to the official website if you want to learn more. What I will say is that, as far as obscure international days go, it beats such eccentric celebrations as Ed Balls Day, Global Wind Day and International Dog B...

Bagging 4,000m peaks in Morocco

It was arranged at very short notice, but our brief visit to the High Atlas over Christmas and New Year, was as enjoyable as any week’s holiday I’ve ever had.

I found a local trekking agent Pathfinders Treks on TripAdvisor, and was impressed by their owner Rachid’s almost instant response to my enquiry, offering a fair price for precisely the services we needed – a guide, cook, mule, food, transport to Imlil, and accommodation at both Imlil and Toubkal. There proved to be no catch. Apart from...

It’s the Everest silly announcement season again

It was a slow news week over the Christmas period, and this is perhaps why the mainstream media fell for the Everest silly announcement hoax for the umpteenth time.

This particular stunt happens roughly once a year, and the sequence of events is as follows:

The Government of Nepal appoints a new Minister for Tourism. The Minister decides to stamp his mark by making a silly announcement about Everest, with no intention of following through with it. Often it’s the same announcement that was ma...

Is this the world’s strangest summit cairn?

Take a look at the photo below, and tell me if you can see anything funny about it.

Don’t worry. It’s not a scene from War of the Worlds, and that’s not a Martian fighting machine behind Edita’s head, sneaking over the rock and preparing to zap her with a heat ray.

This is the summit of 3,880m Tibherine East in the High Atlas Mountains, a peak just a short distance below the north ridge of Jebel Toubkal, the highest mountain in Morocco.

That thing behind Edita is actually an old aircraft engi...

A return to the Moroccan High Atlas

By the time you read this, I’ll be in the High Atlas mountains in Morocco (hopefully) bagging a few 4,000ers.

I was there three years ago, almost by accident. I left it too late to organise my Christmas/New Year trip that year, so I ended up joining two back-to-back group trips, the first to make winter ascents of Toubkal and Ouanoukrim, and the second a short desert trek in southern Morocco.

Approaching Toubkal Refuge in the Moroccan High Atlas

I hadn’t been too impressed by my two summer tr...

Sea to summit on Chimborazo, part 3: the climb

This is part 3 in a series of posts about our Chimborazo sea to summit adventure. See here for part 1 and part 2.

We had cycled from sea level at Guayaquil and circled Chimborazo on foot, climbing Carihuairazo on the way. It wasn’t the most direct way, and there may not be many others who follow in our footsteps, but it had been fun. We had just one more task to do: to climb to the summit.

But first we had a rest day, only our second of the trip. I had improved a lot since my collapse by the...

An evening with Mick and Vic, British climbing’s answer to Vic and Bob

One of the great things about being back in London again is that I get to attend some of the many mountaineering lectures at the Royal Geographical Society (RGS). This commendable social mobility scheme enables ordinary folk like me, who are neither wealthy, aristocratic nor very good climbers to spend an evening among the world’s climbing elite in an atmosphere that resembles an Eton Old Boys reunion.

Few lectures have exemplified this better than one a couple of weeks ago by Mick Fowler and...