Mountaineering

Great Aletsch Glacier

The odd thing about a glacier is its ugliness [1300 words, 7 mins

24 hrs ago •

Ronald Turnbull

Mysteries of our personalities

Boardman-Tasker part 2: Pete Boardman

Sep 4 •

Ronald Turnbull

Adventures in the Alpine Style

Boardman and Tasker Part 1: Joe Tasker [1400 words, 6 mins

Aug 28 •

Ronald Turnbull

Ladies in the Alps

Climbing mountains in the 1820s: an obviously masculine activity? Well, maybe not… [1600 words 7min

Aug 7 •

Ronald Turnbull

The Seven Deadly Sports

Mountaineering is a sport, but most of the rest are merely games. So says Ernest Hemingway. [1400 words 6 min

Jul 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

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

Dying on the Eiger – Part 2: the Mittellegi Ridge

The Eiger North Face: who would want to climb that lethal thing? Meanwhile me and David are doing the Mittellegi, the ridge that runs along the top edge…

Feb 7 •

Ronald Turnbull

A short history of dying on the Eiger

Heading up the railway towards the Eiger’s Mittellegi Ridge, while looking down its dreaded North Face. [3600 words, 15min

Jan 31 •

Ronald Turnbull

Annapurna 1950 vs Everest 1953

It’s not fair to compare the small-scale French expedition to Annapurna with the large, well organised British and Commonwealth one three years later…

Dec 20, 2023 •

Ronald Turnbull

Three Peaks of mountain writing

Mountaineering throws up fundamental questions about friendship and obsession, about sport and ethics, about life and death. It also throws up some fine…

Dec 6, 2023 •

Ronald Turnbull

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