With Edita working in Haiti for a second year, we returned to the Dominican Republic to explore its mountains for a second time. Last year we climbed its highest mountain, Pico Duarte, by its quick…

The string of disaster reports from Nepal just won’t stop. A massive avalanche struck the base camp at the foot of the 7,126-meter-high Himlung Himal today in the morning local time. The tents set up ...

Situated at a confluence of the Bhote Khosi, Trisuli and Langtang rivers at the end of the road from Kathmandu, Syaphru Besi was the gateway to the Langtang trek, Tamang Heritage Trail, and pilgrim…

I’ve made several visits to the Black Mountains over the years, but I had never climbed its highest peak, Waun Fach (811m), so this year I decided to put this omission behind me by climbing it twic…

Two weeks ago today, on July 30, 2026, ten climbers died in a single avalanche on Broad Peak. The event has received extensive media coverage, in part because Nirmal “Nims” Purja, one o…

I’ve recently finished reading Mount Everest the Reconnaissance 1935 by Tony Astill. The book was interesting to me because it described the first ascent of 7,045m Lhakpa Ri by Bill Tilman and Edmu…

I only bring you the really important stories on this blog, and here’s one that will have you choking on your Kendal Mint Cake. With the Everest season over, along with the usual stories about traf…

There have been many books about Sherpa mountaineers over the years, but few have been written from the perspective of Sherpas themselves. One that comes close is Sherpa by Pradeep Bashyal and Anki…

A recent TV show on Channel 4 claimed that a well-known peak in South Wales resembled a set of trouser cushions, without producing photographic evidence. Was it true? There was only one way to find…

The Arenigs are a lesser known area of mountains in south-east Snowdonia. Most of the peaks are quite low, but one, Arenig Fawr, rises head and shoulders above the rest. It was only a short drive w…

The Rhinogs are not the most lofty peaks in Britain, but what they lack in height, they make up for in toughness. Paths are faint, steep and rough, and the peaks feel wild and remote. They had me s…

In the early 1970s, the slopes of K2 were still relatively untouched. Although Italians had first set foot on the summit, American climbers considered it to be their mountain. Two expeditions in 19…

The Aran Hills form a north-south ridge extending 14km from the shores of Bala Lake to the sleepy village of Dinas Mawddwy, nestling between hills at a confluence of the River Dovey in southern Sno…

After six years of heavy breathing, lolling tongues, hard swallowing and occasional salivation, I’ve finally finished narrating and publishing all my books as audiobooks. The very last one, T…

We saved the best walk for the best day. Edita and I had spied Ben Cruachan’s airy summit and hair-raising summit ridge from the top of Ben O’Cockle two days earlier. I could also see from the map …

YouTube video by Bruce Springsteen

A short distance east of our previous day’s Munros lay Ben Lui, a mountain considered by many to be the finest peak in the Southern Highlands. I once took a photo of it from the north-east, r…

It was the fifth year in a row that Edita and I would be spending the Christmas period in Scotland trying to get up some hills, and our expectations weren’t high. Icy blizzards, deep snow, freezing…

A few years ago, I wrote a blog post to explain that from that moment on I would aim to climb more obscure mountains that hardly anyone writes about. But how to decide which unusual peaks to climb?…

The whole of Europe is in the middle of a scorching heatwave. Here in the Cotswolds the grass is as brown as a hay bale and the thermometer has been touching 30°C. It seemed like a good time to go …

Last year Edita and I hiked the famous GR20 long-distance trail along the spine of mountainous Corsica. It was our first experience of so-called ‘self-guided’ trips, where an operator b…

This is the second of four posts describing our trek around the Tour du Mont Blanc in September, a classic 170km circuit of Western Europe’s highest mountain. After starting out from Chamonix and w…