Mark Horrell's Blog

A short distance south of 886m Pen y Fan, the highest peak in the Brecon Beacons (or Bannau Brycheiniog as they are now known), which I wrote about in May, is a range of peaks less well known to the outside world.

The Rhigos Hills form an escarpment on the northern side of an area of Wales known simply as The Valleys, a string of heavily populated parallel rifts running north to south through the upland terrain north of Cardiff. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries the Valleys were a centre fo...

I have an idiosyncratic relationship with ladders.

Here’s what I wrote in Seven Steps from Snowdon to Everest about climbing the ladders of Everest’s Second Step, which some people consider to be the big peak’s most daunting feature.

The Englishman [Leo] Houlding graded the top section of the Second Step an HVS, or Hard Very Severe… The American [Conrad] Anker rated it 5.10, which is a climbing grade, and not its height in feet and inches. At that moment I could have LOL’d at these abbreviation...

I have a large coffee table book on my bookshelf called Trekking Beyond: Walk the World’s Epic Trails. Yes, I know what you’re thinking – why is it on my bookshelf, not on my coffee table? I don’t have an answer to that question, but I can tell you that it has this to say about the Tour du Mont Blanc (TMB):

More impressive [than its 170km] are the 10,000m of cumulative ascent… Without requiring technical skills, crampons or a down-suit to fend off the biting cold, Mont Blanc trekkers cover more...

This is the second of two posts about our recent visit to the mountainous Caribbean island of Hispaniola. In the first post, I introduced you to the Dominican Republic, and how we came to trek there. In this post, I describe our assault on Pico Duarte (3,101m), La Pelona (3,095m) and La Rusilla (3,040m), the three highest mountains in the Caribbean.

The starting point for the main route up Pico Duarte is the Armando Bermudez National Park headquarters at La Cienaga, a small town set within a woo...

A few years ago, after a year of frustration on the 8,000m peaks, I wrote a blog post called Creative peak bagging is the way forward to explain that I would be choosing my adventures differently in future. Instead of having the same old bucket list as everyone else, of difficult peaks that I really must climb before my legs tell me that they’ve had enough, I would aim to climb more obscure mountains that hardly anyone writes about.

A Dickson Step is a small step about 5 to 10 centimetres high in a hotel bathroom doorway. The step is designed in such a way as to be a trip hazard for unsuspecting guests who get up to relieve themselves during the night.

In a classic Dickson Step scenario, the toilet will be positioned 2 to 3 metres in front of the doorway – an optimum distance to ensure that in the event of a fall, the victim’s head is likely to land in it.

A couple of weeks ago, my wife dropped a bombshell.

It’s not what you’re thinking. Edita is currently working in Haiti on a humanitarian mission, which means that we’re waking up each morning separated by a five-hour time difference. I understand that there isn’t much to do in Haiti on an evening, and earlier this month, Edita let slip that she’s been passing the time by listening to my last audiobook on Spotify.

This was a bombshell for two reasons. Firstly, somebody actually listens to my self...

A couple of weeks ago, my wife dropped a bombshell.

It’s not what you’re thinking. Edita is currently working in Haiti on a humanitarian mission, which means that we’re waking up each morning separated by a five-hour time difference. I understand that there isn’t much to do in Haiti on an evening, and earlier this month, Edita let slip that she’s been passing the time by listening to my last audiobook on Spotify.

This was a bombshell for two reasons. Firstly, somebody actually listens to my self...

In 2007, I visited Xinjiang, a desert region in the far west of China that doesn’t feature highly on many people’s tourist bucket list.

Wedged between the foothills of three huge mountain ranges – the Karakoram to the south, Pamirs to the north-west, and the Kunlun to the west – the giant snow dome of Muztag Ata (7,546m) rises far above the surrounding landscape of dusty brown peaks. I first learned about it from the writing of Eric Shipton, the great mountain explorer who served as Consul Gener...

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. Meanwhile, colleagues in Geneva have complained of temperatures approaching a scarcely bearable 38°C.

For Edita, none of this is extreme. She is currently working in Haiti, where these temperatures are on the moderate side. She was home for ten days of R&R, and it seemed like a good time to go hill walking. We decided to head for the ...