Mark Horrell

"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.

Ever 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....

The Chomolungma Diaries is a true story of ordinary people climbing Mount Everest with a commercial expedition, and preparing for the biggest day of their lives. Imagine your life clipped into a narrow line of cord five miles above the Earth....

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....

He had been an ordinary hiker who had only read books about mountaineering. When he signed up for an organized trek in Nepal with a group of elderly ladies, little did he know that ten years later he would be attempting to climb the world's highest mountain....

The mountain gods were protective of Manaslu, a two-pronged peak in the Nepal Himalaya, and one of the world’s 14 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....

In April 2014 Mark Horrell went on a mountaineering expedition to Nepal, hoping to climb Lhotse, the fourth-highest mountain in the world....