When Edmund Hillary stepped onto the summit of Mount Everest at 11.30 on 29th May 1953 he didn’t admire the view, or dance a jig of triumph. No, he reported that the first thing he did was to look for traces of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine. The mystery of what happened to Mallory and … Read more
Many people are unaware that it was a British expedition that first climbed Mount Everest, in 1953. Or that this was after no less than eight previous British attempts on the mountain. In this article, I will look at the strange British obsession with the world’s highest mountain. Even though the first people to climb … Read more
Fans of Brian Blessed will know of his fascination with Mount Everest. Some will know that he climbed high on the mountain without oxygen in 1990, 1993, and 1996. I climbed with Brian Blessed on Mount Everest as his film crew in 1990, and then as his mountain guide in 1993, and I will never … Read more
Mount Everest is unusual in having an Advanced Base Camp (ABC) in between Base Camp and Camp 1. It’s on the less-visited northern, Tibetan side of the mountain. It’s also probably the world’s highest walk, as you don’t need ropes, axes or crampons to get there. In 2011 I trekked the 14 miles up to … Read more
When I climbed Mount Everest in 1993 I saw five dead bodies in the snow along the route. And on my descent, a fellow climber fell to his death. Dead bodies on the mountain are sadly nothing new. But whose was the oldest body on Everest? Norbu Sherpa was the first climber to be killed … Read more
