Footsteps on the Mountain Diaries

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Islands in the Snow

Islands in the Snow

Two days east of Lukla was a pleasant yak pasture surrounded by high peaks. When Col. Jim Roberts set out to look for it in 1953, he ended up making the first ascent of Mera Peak and sowing the seeds of Himalayan tourism.Mera Peak has become a popular...

The Baruntse Adventure

The Baruntse Adventure

Sherpa legend told of an enchanted valley with an invisible village, Shangri-La, that was said to be a place of great beauty.The valley became the nemesis of legendary mountaineer Edmund Hillary, who travelled there to climb 7,129m Baruntse, but...

The Chomolungma Diaries

The Chomolungma Diaries

In April 2012 Mark Horrell travelled to Tibet hoping to become, if not the first person to climb Mount Everest, at least the first Karl Pilkington lookalike to do so.He joined a mountaineering expedition which included an Australian sexagenarian, two...

The Everest Politics Show

The Everest Politics Show

In April 2014 Mark Horrell went on a mountaineering expedition to Nepal, hoping to climb Lhotse, the fourth-highest mountain in the world, which shares a base camp and climbing route with Mount Everest.He dreamed of following in the footsteps of...

The Manaslu Adventure

The Manaslu Adventure

The mountain gods were protective of Manaslu, a two-pronged peak in the Nepal Himalaya, and one of the world’s fourteen 8,000m peaks.Many years ago, a Japanese team tried to climb it, but the gods had sent an avalanche in their wake which destroyed a...

Thieves, Liars and Mountaineers

Thieves, Liars and Mountaineers

This is the tale of Mark Horrell’s not-so-nearly ascent of Gasherbrum in Pakistan, of how one man’s boredom and frustration was conquered by a gutsy combination of exhaustion, cowardice, and sheer mountaineering incompetence.He made not one, not two,...