Archive - About Mountains

Scratching the surface

Striae and slickensides, marks made by glaciers and marks made by great movements of the Earth [1200 words 5 mins

May 15 •

Ronald Turnbull

Aleister Crowley, magus and mountaineer

A brief round-up on the most evil man to ever climb Kanchenjunga [1300 words, 6 mins

May 8 •

Ronald Turnbull

The Cloud of Unknowing

Gerald Macdonaldson, youth group leader, finds his own mapreading leads him into confusion. [fiction: 1300 words, 5 min

May 1 •

Ronald Turnbull

April 2024

Suffering and fun

We should minimise our own future pain. But, as mountaineers and long distance walkers, we don't. Behavioral psychology could have some answers here…

Apr 24 •

Ronald Turnbull

William Shakespeare, mountain man

Birnam Wood, a cave in the Brecon Beacons, and a long walk to Milford Haven: from the man who invented mountaineers [1000 words, 4 min

Apr 17 •

Ronald Turnbull

John Muir's 1000-mile walk to Florida

John Muir walks across the eastern USA in 1867 [1800 words 8 mins

Apr 10 •

Ronald Turnbull

Meru (2015) – is this the best mountain movie so far?

Meru, the near-mythic mountain in the Garhwal Himalaya, offers 1400m of steep ice and overhanging granite. But in the film, it’s the human beings that…

Apr 3 •

Ronald Turnbull

March 2024

From the Alps to Bloomsbury

George Mallory, Everest climber, lives on in a novel by EM Forster. [1700 words, 8 mins

Mar 27 •

Ronald Turnbull

Did Mallory make it?

Did George Mallory and Sandy Irvine reach Everest's summit on 8 June 1924? Here's all of what we know. [2400 words: 10 mins

Mar 20 •

Ronald Turnbull

Mind has Mountains

Gerard Manley Hopkins could have been the greatest outdoor writer of the Victorian age. But, for religious reasons, wasn’t. [1300 words 6 mins

Mar 13 •

Ronald Turnbull

Knee Breeches: why aren’t we all wearing them?

The fall and fall of this practical and attractive form of legwear [750 words, 3 min

Mar 6 •

Ronald Turnbull

February 2024

Tors for thought

Grim granite lanscapes – Dartmoor, the Cairngorms – have the silliest of decorative ornament up on top: the granite tors. [1300 words, 5 mins

Feb 28 •

Ronald Turnbull

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