Mark Horrell's Blog

‘This small village, with scarcely any fields, seemed to live by what it could fleece from travellers – which, I thought, would be very little judging by what they had to offer and the kind of traveller who passed through. It is a dull place, like the other villages on this rather dull trade route where neither mule-trains with jingling bells and scarlet wool-tufted harness, nor tea-houses where the picturesque muleteers foregather, are met.’H.W. Tilman, Nepal Himalaya

These were the somewhat ...

I’ve looked at Waun Fach from both sides now, from up and down, and still somehow… I really don’t know Waun Fach at all.
Joni Mitchell didn’t say

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 twice.

Now I know what some of you will be thinking: Waun Fach? Is that the name of a mountain or a Welsh swear word? It sounds like the sort of thing Gareth B...

As we climbed higher into the mountains, the orchestra started tuning up.

The viola came first, a long, high note like the sound of a whistle.

It was answered by the first violin: another extended whine, higher still, from what seemed like a different part of the forest.

The viola responded with a deeper note, just as mournful.

The pattern was repeated again and again, but the orchestra never started playing the music. There were no warbles, trills or melodies like a song thrush might make after...

This is the second of two posts about Lhakpa Ri, a mountain in Tibet first climbed by Bill Tilman and Edmund Wigram in 1935. In the first post I described that historic ascent. This second post features an excerpt from my diary describing my own ascent of Lhakpa Ri 72 years later.

I climbed Lhakpa Ri on 11 May 2007 as part of a commercial expedition by UK mountaineering operator Jagged Globe. The leader of that trip was an Australian mountain guide called Mic Rofe, who also led us up to the Nort...

I’ve recently finished reading Mount Everest the Reconnaissance 1935 by Tony Astill about – it’s going to be hard to say this without teaching your grandmother how to suck eggs – the 1935 Mount Everest Reconnaissance expedition led by Eric Shipton.

The book is subtitled The Forgotten Adventure, possibly because not much has been written about it. The expedition is partly famous for what they didn’t do, which was to reconnoitre Mount Everest (or not). Unexpectedly, the British Mount Everest Commi...

I only bring you the really important stories here on the Footsteps on the Mountain blog, and here’s one that will have you choking on your Kendal Mint Cake. 

The Everest season is now over, as are the usual regurgitated stories about traffic jams on the south-east ridge. It seems like a good time to report on what is, in my opinion, a far more heinous example of queuing on mountaintops that has emerged in recent years.

Arguably the most notable event on Everest this year was the American climber Tyler Andrews claiming a fastest known time (also known, somewhat appropriately, as a FKT) for an oxygen-supported ascent from Everest Base Camp on the south side to the summit.

It was his sixth attempt to claim a FKT on Everest. His previous attempts have been on the much harder north side, but he diverted to the south side this time after China closed access from the north. He used supplementary oxygen from Camp 2, a...

About four years ago, Edita and I thought that it might be a nice way to pass the time if we started ticking off the highest point in each of the UK’s counties (a list known as the ‘county tops’). This has led to some enthralling visits to roadsides, electricity pylons, sewage farms and junkyards. But it has also led to some quite enjoyable hikes up obscure hills we wouldn’t otherwise have visited.

A couple of weeks ago, we finished bagging all thirteen of the historic county tops in Wales. The ...

‘What does it look like?’ the blind man asked.

‘It looks like…’

His sighted companion paused, searching for a comparison.

‘Er… buttocks.’

‘Then I’m surprised they didn’t call it the Devil’s Bike Rest,’ quipped the blind man.

The blind man was Chris McCausland, the comedian who has become better known as a celebrity dancer after winning a TV dancing contest.

The other man was Alexander Armstrong, presenter of the TV show Perfect Pub Walks, where middle-aged men go on a summer walk somewhere in th...

Sometimes you’ve just got to go with the flow and see where it leads. For Edita it led to Haiti in the Caribbean, where she has been carrying out humanitarian work for the last year.

Haiti isn’t a very sensible place to go climbing mountains, but as luck would have it, it shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic, a much safer country that happens to be home to the highest three mountains in the Caribbean: Pico Duarte (3,101m), La Pelona (3,095m) and La Rusilla (3,044m).

Until ...