Blogs
Peak Mountaineering’s Blog: Stok Kangri 2015 Expedition in numbers
Whether it was Hannibal and his many elephants crossing the Alps or Ueli Steck’s sub three-hour ascent of the Eiger North Face, all great adventure success stories are really nothing to do with personal toil or breaking down psychological and physical barriers in the face of adversity. They are all, just like the success of the 2015 Trek & Mountain Stok Kangri expedition, really just about generating interesting statistics. So, revealed for the first time and after days of number crunching and analysing gigabytes of crucial data at Peak HQ, is the numerical low down on one of climbing histories most … Read more »
Filed under: Blogs, Peak Mountaineering's blog
Andy Kirkpatrick’s blog #4: ‘Old School’
The other day I found an old book on my shelf when its tatty green spine caught my eye as I thumbed across the shelf looking for something else. Many times before I had passed it by, but this time my eyes fixed on it and my book blindness, caused by its ever-presence, suddenly lifted. It has been there longer than any other book I have ever owned; over 30 years, and probably unread for over 20. The fact that I’d never given it away to a charity shop was a sign of its importance. I stopped and pulled it out. The … Read more »
Filed under: Andy Kirkpatrick's blog, Blogs
Andy Kirkpatrick blog #3: ‘Dehydrated’
I once went climbing with the comedian Ed Bryne, who told me he hated dehydrated food, because it tasted like shit “so I bought myself a dehydrator,” he said “so I could make my own food that tasted like shit”. Personally I think people who complain about food are probably basing their culinary snobbery on what they would eat at home, or in a fancy restaurant, not the alternative. When I started climbing, only polar types or those on big-budget expeditions had dehydrated food, as the price was beyond the budget of any alpinist or backpacker. Back then the staples where … Read more »
Filed under: Andy Kirkpatrick's blog
Andy Kirkpatrick blog #2: ‘Polar Poodles’
Don’t you just hate when someone brings you down to size. When someone bursts your bubble. I do it myself – in fact I relish in giving a kick to an overblown ego. My primary vehicle for this is the language of the extreme. When someone makes a big deal about climbing Everest, I joke that there’s no climbing, and that it’s more like DIY, as whenever there’s a hard bit ‘someone puts up a ladder’. Another bubble I like to prick is the self-proclaimed ‘polar explorer’, a breed that has not existed since the first mapping satellites went into … Read more »
Filed under: Andy Kirkpatrick's blog
Andy Kirkpatrick blog #1: ‘Piteraq’
Welcome to my new monthly blog, appearing exclusively in ‘Trek & Mountain’ magazine and here at www.trekandmountain.com… I climbed with a remarkable Norwegian last winter called Aleks Gamme, probably best know as the gnarly bloke from the film ‘Crossing the Ice’, in which he raced to be the first person to ski to and from the South Pole without support or kites (he sort of won). Aleks was not a man to turn down a challenge – his South Pole trip was solo, meaning he was out on the ice for two months alone, covering 2000km – which no doubt has served … Read more »
Filed under: Andy Kirkpatrick's blog
