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A Cairngorm Winter Diary: Part Two
As I rolled over and over, the snow was suffocating as it filled my nostrils, and when I opened my mouth to say goodbye to the world, it filled my mouth cutting off my ability to breath. My ears filled...
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Distant Snows : A Mountaineer's Odyssey.....Reviewed
‘Read no history: nothing but biography for that is life without theory’. Disraeli. I believe this autobiography illustrates that mountain adventures do not have to be all cutting-edge or at extreme...
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Livesey on Langdale
Livesey on Gogarth The following piece, originally published in the late lamented Crags magazine, 37 years ago, shows the inimitable Pete Livesey in waspish form as he offers 'another vicious poison...
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St Sunday Crag
Somewhere in an old guide-book, published more than fifty years ago, I remember reading: "St. Sunday Crag IS the Ullswater mountain," and, when you come to think about it, it's not a bad description....
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The Shortest line to Nowhere
Recent marketing media from Adidas is indicative of a wider trend in the climbing community, one of commercialisation that threatens the cultural and historical health of the sport.Let us be clear,...
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Walter Parry Haskett-Smith: To Napes Needle and Beyond
Napes Needle: a rare photo of Haskett Smith posing half way up, taken in 1890 by Edmund, his younger brother. It was found in a box in an attic in Sydney, Australia in the personal effects of Rusty...
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Sven Hedin: Travels under a darkening sky
OriginalImage: Sven Hedin Project In ten journeys in Xinjiang, formerly known as Chinese Turkestan, and three in Tibet, a name that I noted which appeared again and again in their recent recorded...
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Quo Vadis Bergsteigerland
A few years ago a whole edition of the fine German magazine `Alpinismus' posed this ques-tion. Today it is of particular relevance to English and Welsh rock climbing, which seems to be on the way to...
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Norton of Everest.....Review
Mount Everest and its climbing history, still retains a keen interest within the mountaineering community and the general public, none more so than the early attempts in 1921, 1922 and 1924. The...
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Blind Date at Orco
Ed Drummond on Itaca Nel Sole: 'Possibly the most beautiful route at Orco': Original Photo Dave Cook'I 've broken my ankle bouldering at Hobson Moor Quarry," Pat Devine said apologetically over the...
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Shooting ghosts at midnight
THE last link with the splendid early days of British rock-climbing is still living quietly, surrounded by his mountain photographs, in a Keswick house that looks out over one of the finest views in...
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The Huge Music
Dropping down from the craggy heights of Dyniewyd into the pastoral valley of Nantmor.The car park near Gelli Iago was surprisingly full for the middle of the week. I had never considered this quiet...
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Little Brown Jug
My first brush with Little Brown Jug was the worst. It happened on December 26th., 1962, the first day of the great freeze-up in that terrible winter that helped kill Sylvia Plath. In an excess of...
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Hard Travelling
A recent trip with an enthusiastic group of Chinese climbers, reminded me of what the sport was like in the UK before ease of travel changed perceptions about the distant hills. On that occasion we...
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Return to the Buachaille
Len and I thought we knew everything that the Buachaille Etive Mòr can produce, but our old friend of innumerable ascents had a surprise in store for us on a bleak cloudy day when the air was full of...
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The First ascent of Suicide Wall
In the 1930s and 40s I fell deeply in love with Clogwyn y Geifr, otherwise known as 'The Kitchen Cliffs'. I haunted the place and was not really happy unless I was wading up through the vegetation of...
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Bill Tilman-The Last Hero? Two Book reviews
Image www.bluemoment.com‘Put on a good pair of boots and walk out the door!’ ‘The Nepal Himalaya 1952’ and ‘Ice with Everything 1974’ published by Lodestar Books and Vertebrate Publishing. £12 each in...
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The Man Who Abolished Guilt
"Yes, I know there's a gap in the market, but is there a market in the gap?"... "You bet there is," Johnny replied, "...'think of all the men you know — fathers, husbands, students, workers, wankers —...
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Up and About: The Hard Road to Everest.......Extract
Mount Asgard: Baffin IslandDescribed by Michael Palin as a ‘full and fascinating portrait of one of the great figures of mountaineering’, the first volume of Doug Scott’s two-part autobiography, Up and...
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Early Days at Tremadog
I got to know the Tremadog cliffs in 1953 when the Birmingham Cave and Crag Club (of which I was a member) bought Pant Ifan, a traditional Welsh cottage on the plateau above the cliff of that name. We...
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