Mark Horrell's Blog

When I stood atop Aran Benllyn in southern Snowdonia back in February, snow cover on the mountaintops caused several nearby massifs to stand out. To the west, rugged Cadair Idris and the elongated Rhinogs spanned the horizon, and to the west the gentle curves of the Berwyns painted a white ribbon across the lowlands. Even the more distant Snowdon massif on the northern horizon drew attention by rising into the clouds.

One range between myself and Snowdon, however, was less distinct – so much so ...

Let’s start by explaining the amazing pun in the title of this post, or some of you who have tuned in hoping to hear With a Little Help from My Friends sung by a male voice choir might end up disappointed.

‘Fawr’ as many of you know, is the Welsh word for ‘Big’. Hill walkers will be well familiar with it; many Welsh mountains come in pairs, with a Fawr (big) and a Fach (little). The Rhinog Hills, a coastal range in southern Snowdonia, has two such peaks and four main peaks in total. This trip re...

“In the mountaineering literature of the 1970s, bruised feelings and simmering resentments were beginning to replace frostbite and hypoxia as the signature ailments of high-altitude mountaineering.” Maurice Isserman and Stewart Weaver, Fallen Giants

In the early 1970s, the slopes of K2 were still relatively untouched. Since the first attempt by a British team in 1902, the number of expeditions to climb it could still be counted on fingers and toes, and only two men, Achille Compagnoni and Lino...

Peak bagging (aka ‘box ticking’) is frequently derided by people who consider themselves to be a better class of traveller. If, however, like me, you’re quite happy to be considered a lower class of traveller, then it has many advantages. It takes you to parts of the world you wouldn’t otherwise go. Some of these, admittedly, wouldn’t be worth travelling to without that elusive tick. But these are far outweighed by the hidden gems and the simple novelty of going somewhere new.

You can also pick ...

Well, I’ve finally done it after six years of heavy breathing, lolling tongues, hard swallowing and occasional salivation.

No, not that. I mean I’ve finally finished narrating all of my diaries and released them as audiobooks. I completed the very last one, The Baruntse Adventure, last month. I no longer need to spend hours on end locked in the padded room at the back of the house talking into a microphone (although my wife thinks I should spend more time there). It means that you can now enjoy ...

This is the last of three posts about our Xmas and New Year trip to Scotland’s southern highlands, trying to tick off some more Munros (mountains in Scotland over 3,000ft in height). In the first post, we tackled Beinn a’ Chochuill and Beinn Eunaich, in the second Ben Lui. It was time for Ben Cruachan…

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...

This is the second of three posts about our Xmas and New Year trip to Scotland’s southern highlands, trying to tick off some more Munros (mountains in Scotland over 3,000ft in height). In the first post, we tackled Beinn a’ Chochuill and Beinn Eunaich, Next, we moved further east…

The forecast for the following day predicted higher winds on the summits. The panorama that Ben Cruachan had presented from the summit of Ben O’Cockle – of an airy knife blade of rock, perfect for splitting one’s trous...

This is the first of three posts about our Xmas and New Year trip to Scotland’s southern highlands, trying to tick off some more Munros (mountains in Scotland over 3,000ft in height).

Warning: This blog post contains several bad puns.

‘How many Munros will you climb next week,’ my 84-year-old father asked me over Christmas dinner, ‘seven or eight?’

‘Haha,’ I replied, choking on a Brussels sprout. ‘Not in winter. We’ll be lucky to get up one.’

It was the fifth year in a row that Edita and I would...

Some of you may have clicked through to this blog post because the title intrigued or (perhaps more accurately) confused you. There are a lot of adjectives in it. What the heck does it mean, precisely?

The title needs all of those adjectives, for if I dropped any one of them, it would mean a different list.

A list of the 10 highest mountains ever climbed would simply be a list of the world’s 10 highest mountains because – yes – all 10 of them have been climbed.

What about a chronological list of...

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...