I've long been an admirer of Harold William "Bill" Tilman (1898-1977). I first encountered his name – and his legend – on my first trip to Nepal in 1992. My trip leader, Nick Yardley, and our sirdar, Urgen Sherpa, pointed out a distant, rugged pass leading from the Langtang Valley into the Jugal Himal and […]

Lots of news out there recently about the Indo-Tibetan Border Police Expedition, which is on Everest as we speak and hoping in the next month to send a team to the summit and ski back down. Colin over at the Mount Everest | British Story blog posted today about another famous ski descent of Everest – the […]

There’s nothing easy about climbing mountains. They’re big, cold, and dangerous. You get sick, you get tired, your head hurts and your muscles ache and your lungs burn. And, on Everest, all of that is magnified in therarefied air most often occupied by jets. But, to me, these are not the hardest parts of climbing […]

I suppose we go to Mount Everest, granted the opportunity, because—in a word—we can’t help it. Or, to state the matter rather differently, because we are mountaineers…. To refuse the adventure is to run the risk of drying up like a pea in its shell.