Mark Horrell's Blog, page 33

On night-time ascents

I hate night-time ascents.

Half a night’s sleep, waking up in the dark, in a freezing cold tent, and getting dressed by the beam of a head torch.

Trying to have breakfast in the middle of the night when you’re not remotely hungry.

Waiting around in the cold night air for your companions to get ready.

Trudging for hours in the pitch blackness and seeing nothing at all of your surroundings. All you watch for hour after hour are the legs of the person in front by the beam of a head torch.

Gettin...

A hill walking comedy classic

Many people will look back on 2016 as an annus horribilis. We’ve had Brexit, Trump and burkhini bans. Here in Italy we’ve experienced a number of earthquakes, with many dead and homeless. But all these things pale beside what is happening in Aleppo, Mosul, Yemen and north Nigeria. Worse may be to come: they say South Sudan is on the verge of genocide.

Most of us are cocooned from these things, but still we worry about them. Life is full of misfortune and contradiction, and I firmly believe th...

Kilimanjaro: returning to the crown of Africa

I’ve been thinking a lot about Kilimanjaro this year, ever since watching David Breashears’ film Kilimanjaro: To the Roof of Africa back in June. I was long overdue a return, and over Christmas I’ll be doing just that.

I first climbed Africa’s highest mountain in 2002, and at time the giant 5895m volcano in northern Tanzania was also the highest mountain I had ever climbed. If you’ve read my book Seven Steps from Snowdon to Everest, you will know that it was the third step of my journey from...

How to report a missing trekker in Nepal

Last week a new service was launched to help find tourists who have gone missing while trekking in Nepal. The site, MissingTrekker.com is intended to be a comprehensive database of missing trekkers, and was set up by travel blogger and guidebook writer David Ways, when he discovered no such record is kept by Nepalese authorities.

Missingtrekker.com provides lots of useful information about trekking safety

Dave is the man behind the popular travel blog The Longest Way Home, which he set up whe...

Book review: A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby

One of the best books about mountaineering ever written, and certainly one of the funniest, was written by a complete novice, who had never climbed in his life when he decided to tackle a remote peak in Afghanistan that had never been climbed before.

A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush: one of the funniest books about mountain exploration ever written

It’s a few years since I read A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, but it’s one of those books that I always knew I would read again. Since moving to Ita...

Nepal’s scramble for first ascents – or are they?

We’ve been hearing a lot about fake news recently, but don’t worry, I’m not going to talk about politics. Fake news gets everywhere, including the Himalayas. On this blog I’ve written many words about how the mainstream press churn out fake news about Everest based on the latest government announcement. More recently I wrote about how recent summit claims on Manaslu might not be what they seem.

Fake news isn’t anything new. A famous historical example of fakery and mountaineering was Frederic...

You don’t have to win the Boardman Tasker Prize to be a no.1 Amazon bestseller

One doesn’t like to blow one’s own trumpet too often, but I couldn’t resist this one, so please forgive the indulgence. And in any case, I have you, my readers, to thank for it, so I had to post this in order to say thank you.

I couldn’t help noticing this tweet from Vertebrate Publishing in my Twitter feed earlier this week:

Simon McCartney’s Boardman Tasker-winning book The Bond is currently no.1 in the Amazon Kindle charts! pic.twitter.com/pB6Nls0Ids

— VertebratePublishing (@VertebratePub...

My new diary The Everest Politics Show is out tomorrow!

A quick note to let you know that those of you who pre-ordered my latest travel diary from Amazon should receive it on your Kindle tomorrow (24th). If you’ve bought it elsewhere, such as Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and Smashwords, then you should receive it on Monday, 28th. This is a month earlier than my original release date of 24th December, which I’m very happy about.

The Everest Politics Show is out tomorrow

I would like to thank each and every one of you for your support over the...

Nawang Gombu: Heart of a Tiger

When I watched the 46-minute documentary Nawang Gombu: Heart of a Tiger on YouTube last weekend, it had only been watched 151 times before me. This is ridiculous, given this one of a man opening a beer bottle with a chainsaw had been watched 3,234,053 times (one more than that after you clicked on the link).

I’ve mentioned Nawang Gombu previously in this blog. He was the nephew of Tenzing Norgay, and one of my 10 great Sherpa mountaineers of a previous post. Nawang Gombu: Heart of a Tiger has...

The BBC Top Gear Chimborazo fiasco

Last week I received the following email which, initially at least, caused me to roar with laughter.

Hello Mr Horrell,

My name is Richard Holder, a researcher with BBC Top Gear.

We are currently exploring ideas for the new series of our show and had wondered about the possibility of driving a car to the summit of Mount Chimborazo.

I wondered if you thought this might be possible, given your knowledge of and experience on the mountain?

We are purely at the exploratory stage so I’m reaching out...