Sherpa legend told of an enchanted valley with an invisible village, Shangri-La, that was said to be a place of great beauty.The valley became the nemesis of legendary mountaineer Edmund Hillary, who travelled there to climb 7,129m Baruntse, but succumbed to the irresistible draw of Makalu, the great black mountain which towered over the valley. Makalu vanquished him, and he was never the same climber again.Fifty years later, Mark Horrell embarked on a trek up the Barun Val...

In April 2012 Mark Horrell travelled to Tibet hoping to become, if not the first person to climb Mount Everest, at least the first Karl Pilkington lookalike to do so.He joined a mountaineering expedition which included an Australian sexagenarian, two Brits whose idea of hydration meant a box of red wine, and a New Zealander who enjoyed reminding his teammates of the perils of altitude sickness and the number of ways they might die on summit day.The media often write about M...

Two days east of Lukla was a pleasant yak pasture surrounded by high peaks. When Col. Jim Roberts set out to look for it in 1953, he ended up making the first ascent of Mera Peak and sowing the seeds of Himalayan tourism.Mera Peak has become a popular goal for trekkers and novice mountaineers, but few people climb to its true summit, and fewer still travel beyond it to find the secret yak pasture that sparked Roberts’ journey.The yak pasture was the Hongu Valley, a hidden s...

The mountain gods were protective of Manaslu, a two-pronged peak in the Nepal Himalaya, and one of the world’s fourteen 8,000m peaks.Many years ago, a Japanese team tried to climb it, but the gods had sent an avalanche in their wake which destroyed a monastery and set the local people against them. When they returned the next year, they were met with sticks and stones, stripped naked and sent home with red cheeks.Mark Horrell and his two friends Mark and Ian shared a dream ...

This is the tale of Mark Horrell’s not-so-nearly ascent of Gasherbrum in Pakistan, of how one man’s boredom and frustration was conquered by a gutsy combination of exhaustion, cowardice, and sheer mountaineering incompetence.He made not one, not two, but three intrepid assaults, some of which got quite a distance beyond Base Camp, and overcame many perilous circumstances along the way. The mountaineer Joe Simpson famously crawled for three days with a broken leg, but did he ever ha...

In April 2014 Mark Horrell went on a mountaineering expedition to Nepal, hoping to climb Lhotse, the fourth-highest mountain in the world, which shares a base camp and climbing route with Mount Everest.He dreamed of following in the footsteps of Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary, by climbing through the infamous ice maze of the Khumbu Icefall, and he yearned to sleep in the grand amphitheatre of Everest Base Camp, surrounded by towering peaks.He was also intrigued by the me...

His cheeks are as tender as raw meat on a butcher’s block. And those are just the cheeks of his face. As he slumps in the saddle, watching the road disappear into the distance, he aches in parts of his body that he’s only just discovering he has…When Mark travels to Ecuador to go hiking and climbing, he discovers a land of dramatic volcanoes rising through the clouds and wide-open horizons rich in history.But when his partner Edita suggests a return visit, she has a very di...

The heroic story of how Sherpas stood up and took control of their destinyEver since Europeans started exploring the world’s highest mountains and trying to reach their summits in the early 20th century, Sherpas have been an integral part of mountaineering expeditions to the Himalayas. In this anthology curated from his popular Footsteps on the Mountain blog, Mark Horrell explores the evolution of Sherpa mountaineers, from the porters of early expeditions ...

As he teetered on a narrow rock ledge a yak's bellow short of the stratosphere, with a rubber mask strapped to his face, a pair of mittens the size of a sealion's flippers, and a drop of two kilometres below him, it's fair to say Mark Horrell wasn't entirely happy with the situation he found himself in.He was an ordinary hiker who had only read books about mountaineering, and little did he know when he signed up for an organised trek in Nepal with a group of elderly ladies that ten...

As he teetered on a narrow rock ledge a yak’s bellow short of the stratosphere, with a rubber mask strapped to his face, a pair of mittens the size of a sealion’s flippers, and a drop of two kilometres below him, it’s fair to say Mark Horrell wasn’t entirely happy with the situation he found himself in.He had been an ordinary hiker who had only read books about mountaineering. When he signed up for an organised trek in Nepal with a group of elderly ladies, little did he know that t...

His cheeks are as tender as raw meat on a butcher’s block. And those are just the cheeks of his face. As he slumps in the saddle, watching the road disappear into the distance, he aches in parts of his body that he’s only just discovering he has…When Mark travels to Ecuador to go hiking and climbing, he discovers a land of dramatic volcanoes rising through the clouds and wide-open horizons rich in history.But when his partner Edita suggests a return visit, she has a very di...

In April 2012 Mark Horrell travelled to Tibet hoping to become, if not the first person to climb Mount Everest, at least the first Karl Pilkington lookalike to do so.He joined a mountaineering expedition which included an Australian sexagenarian, two Brits whose idea of hydration meant a box of red wine, and a New Zealander who enjoyed reminding his teammates of the perils of altitude sickness and the number of ways they might die on summit day.The media often write about M...