Mark Horrell's Blog, page 5

Ladakh’s Markha Valley Trek: the videos

It’s a full three years and more since I last released a series of my trademark shit videos on YouTube. Some of you are doubtless wondering if a yeti got my tongue. Eighteen months have gone by since I trekked in Ladakh, and the hilarious footage that I took has been lying untouched in the recesses of my hard drive. Recently, however, the laptop fairies have been complaining of tripping over it as they scurry around trying to stop me going anywhere near ChatGPT.

Finally, I heard their cries. I a...

The 8 best books about Everest written in the English language

You may be wondering why I’ve never written this blog post before. In truth, there is never going to be a perfect time for it and now is as good a time as any.

The universe of Everest literature is forever expanding and it’s not possible to reach its end. However, I’ve now travelled far enough to be confident of these eight books’ place in the celestial Everest pantheon.

But enough of this nonsense. Before I get on with the listicle, a note to my international readers. As the title says, these a...

My latest audiobook: The Everest Politics Show – an eyewitness account of the 2014 Everest tragedy

If you’re a follower of this blog then you will know that I’m in the slow and gradual process of recording my diaries and releasing them as audiobooks. I started in 2021 with The Chomolungma Diaries and released The Manaslu Adventure last year.

I’m happy to say that the next instalment, The Everest Politics Show, is now available on Audible, Amazon Apple Books, Spotify and will be available on other outlets very soon.

The Everest Politics Show: available now as an audiobook

The release is timely...

7 mountain weather phenomena: a quick intro, courtesy of Tristan Gooley

The weather forecast for the week wasn’t good when we arrived at our cottage in Glencoe before Christmas. It was going to rain heavily all week, and there was really only one suitable day for a good hill walk (see my previous post).

As happened on previous trips, we spent the first day of our holiday in Fort William, shopping for outdoor gear and browsing the shelves of the Highland Bookshop for rainy day reading. While wandering around the nature section of the latter, my eyes chanced upon the ...

Christmas in Glen Coe II: The Revenge of the Rainstorms

Another Christmas, and another cottage in Scotland for a week. What would the weather hold in store for us this year, and would we get up any mountains?

Edita found us a cosy little place to stay in a row of cottages beside the main road outside Glencoe village. The forecast wasn’t promising. As Santa’s wife said when she looked out of the window, ‘it looks like rain, dear’ (you can keep reading – the jokes get better further on). On Friday 22nd, our first day, there were sudden showers and thic...

I asked Microsoft Copilot to give me a route description for Corsica’s GR20…

…You wouldn’t believe what happened next!

It’s that time of year again, when I delve into the wonders of modern technology and ask AI (that’s artificial intelligence, not insemination) to help make sense of the world’s great mountain questions.

Last year, when ChatGPT was no more than a babe in swaddling clothes, I asked it for answers about the mystery of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine. I believe the technical name for the answers it came back with is a “crock of shite”.

When I asked Copilot w...

The Spasimata Slabs: the day I nearly died on Corsica’s GR20

This is the last in a trio of posts about our recent trek along the legendary GR20 long-distance trail on the island of Corsica. The story began in my first post, Rosé, ridges and laricio pines and continued in A surfeit of scrambling. Strap yourself in for the final thrilling episode.

Jakob’s Norwegian weather forecast wasn’t promising. We’d had it pretty good for the best part of two weeks, but the rain gods were preparing for the last dance. In truth, they’d been threatening to start it for a...

A surfeit of scrambling: walking Corsica’s GR20 North

This is the second in a series of posts about our recent trek along the legendary GR20 long-distance trail on the island of Corsica. The story began in my first post, Rosé, ridges and laricio pines.

When I signed off the last post, I was enjoying a delicious pork rosti and a pichet of vin rosé at a palatial hotel tucked away in the forests of Corsica. You’ll doubtless be on tenterhooks to find out what happened next. How on earth did I get out of that one? Just how did I prise myself away from t...

The most shocking first page in mountaineering literature

One of the things that sometimes annoys me about quite a lot of mountaineering writing is machismo: the equating of various attributes such as physical strength and endurance, single-mindedness and willingness to take risks, with virtue.

I’ve lost count of the number of expedition accounts I’ve read where the hardest route to the top is the only one worth considering, or those where a big argument happens between members of a team and the stronger members are invariably cast as heroes while the ...

Rosé, ridges and laricio pines: walking Corsica’s GR20 South

I’ve known about the GR20 for over 20 years. On my first visit to Nepal, I returned with an unwieldy hardback in the shape of a chopping-board called Top Treks of the World, that I’d picked up in the Pilgrim’s Book House, Kathmandu. A slim volume of few words but many evocative photographs, it featured 29 classic treks on six continents and tickled the imagination of a would-be traveller returning home from his first Himalayan trek.

The four European treks in the book included the GR20 on the Me...