Mark Horrell's Blog

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 ...

Much of the media coverage around Everest this year has focused on a brace of unusual speed ascents that have been framed as a game changer for aspiring Everest climbers. But there was another technological advance that is likely to change the job description for Sherpas much more significantly.

The two speed ascents were unusual in their choice of starting point. These speedsters weren’t trying to leg it to the summit from base camp in the quickest possible time, but to reach the summit in a mi...

In an interview for the mountaineering gear blog OutInUnder, tent designer Martin Zemitis described the moment he first met Babu Chiri Sherpa.

Down came this rather short gentleman about 5 feet in diameter. I think he was nothing but a big lung and a muscle, with legs like tree trunks.

Standing just 1.65m tall and weighing 82kg (or 5’5” high and 13 stones for those of you who prefer good old-fashioned measurements), nobody would ever have suspected Babu Chiri of being an athlete if he walked i...

A review of Sherpa by Pradeep Bashyal and Ankit Babu Adhikari

There have been many books about Sherpa mountaineers over the years. I wrote about some of my favourites in this post from a few years ago. Few have been written from the perspective of Sherpas themselves. Of the three in that post, one was famously ghosted by an American, one was co-written by an Australian, and the other was written by a Sherpa who has lived much of his life in America. Perhaps more significantly, they were by three...