Up Close with GRIT&ROCK Founder Masha Gordon

Details

Parent Category: News

Created: Monday, 28 July 2025 11:18

Up Close with GRIT&ROCK Founder Masha Gordon

A former asset manager for the likes of Goldman Sachs and PIMCO, Masha Gordon moved away from the financial world after completing the seven summits and now balances a number of board roles with regular mountaineering expeditions and her charity GRIT&ROCK, which supports female participation in pioneering alpinism.

^{A moment of poetry in the Alps}

Could you tell us about your professional background and how you came to discover climbing?

For the past 25 years I’ve worked as an investor. Then, about 10 years ago, I transitioned to board work. So I have a whole host of non-executive positions. I chair a couple of companies, I sit on the board of another FTSE company, I have not for profit engagements, I sit on the board of a university and I’m a trustee for the Girls’ Day School Trust. Plus, I am the founder of GRIT&ROCK which champions female attainment in alpinism.

I started climbing 15 years ago, so quite late by some standards. On my maternity leave for my second child I came to Chamonix and discovered this amazing world. I was encouraged to try a basic PD climb and it hooked me.

 

And what was it about the experience that really drew you in?

So for me, the first hook was really poetry. It was waking up in the refuge with 20 other strangers and their smelly socks, putting on your headlamp, getting on the glacier, marching somewhere and, as you do that, seeing this extraordinary sunrise. And being in that flow to the point that you don’t notice how the day passes; coming back with this sort of extraordinary epic in your mind.

I’m very fortunate to be able to structure my professional life to accommodate both my philanthropic pursuits and also my huge passion for being out in nature. I probably climb or ski anywhere between 120 and 180 days a year. It defines me and it’s changed my life. Being in Chamonix and meeting all these extraordinary characters and big personalities, its changed my notion of what a worthy ambition is.

 

^{Less clasically poetic - a ledge bivy near the Aiguille du Grépon}

You charity, GRIT&ROCK turns 10 this year. What was the initial inspiration for its founding?

Looking at the history of the Piolets d’Or in 2016, I think I’m right in saying that, at that point, only two women had ever received a distinction. So I began by asking myself the intellectual question “why?” And, in my corporate career, I would observe that women would feel that they needed to be 130% ready for something to try. And maybe I’m falling into cliché here, but I have experienced this with corporate grant papers, where women pitch quite realistic objectives and rarely go out on a limb, while men dream bigger and bolder.

So we set out to look at what could turn that dynamic and we realised that there were very few grants that are nationality blind. There’s the MEF and the American Alpine Club, but both are very nationally divided and so support a smaller pool. So there were very few international awards and, at that point, less corporate money for female athletes.

Based on that, we set up the foundation with an annual grant focussing on three areas: performance, exploration and apprenticeship. Our goal is that eventually, 50% of the expedition reports in the Alpine Journal and the American Alpine Journal are written by women.

 

And how has the award evolved over the years?

So we had our first call for applications in 2016 and that yielded 30 applications. We’ve continued to make awards annually since then to anywhere between 5 and, this year, 9 recipients. Our annual grant total has also grown from $10,000 a year to $15,000.

What we’ve learned over the years is that we need to match the ambition level of the objective and the skill level of the party, and that we need to focus on established rope parties. We’ve also seen that one of the most beneficial ways to spend the money is to invest in, usually national, programmes that focus on skills building. Programmes like the French National Female Alpine Team (ENAF) and the female members of the Young Alpinists Group. And what’s been really beautiful about that experience is that we’ve seen women like Ramona Volken and Caro North become mentors to those expedition programmes and champion other women to put in their own grant applications.

Then if we look at what athletes do, female and male, over the last 10 years, I’d say the draw of human-powered expeditions, the draw of big wall climbing and the draw of less explored geographies have gone up and the draw of Himalayan climbing has gone down. 

^{Members of the GRIT&ROCK supported French National Female Alpine Team (ENAF)}

^{On the first ascent of Shams Sar (5850m) in Shimshal, Pakistan, 2024}

But not, it seems, for you. I saw you’d been to Shimshal last year. Could you tell us a little about that experience?

I loved it! We had really very little information. We had Jerzy Wala’s map with just numbers for the peaks and no real imagery.

Our original objective was the southeast ridge of Karun Koh. Karun Koh has only been climbed two times before and we’d only looked at the southeast ridge and our planned approach to it on Google Earth. What had looked like a valley we could approach by turned out to be a canyon filled with raging rivers. So we spent 10 days crossing passes to figure out how we could get to the planned base camp site, and the whole time we didn’t see the southeast ridge. Maybe just the top or the bottom of it. On the day we were acclimatising with the gear, the ridge opened before us and it was bejewelled with seracs in every direction.

Having come home from expeditions with no success a number of times, I’ve come to realise that the best way of dealing with remorse and post-expedition depression is to have plan B, C, D and E. So when we turned back at 6,200m on Karun Koh, we’d already identified a few attractive objectives and, in the end, we climbed some beautiful peaks. So I found the journey absolutely superb: going without knowledge, without assured success and experiencing solitary, beautiful alpinism in a place where nature is still very large and you are very, very small.

You can learn more about GRIT&ROCK grants via their website.

 

 

 

Watch: 'Everest Revisited, 1924-2024'

Details

Parent Category: News

Created: Thursday, 17 July 2025 16:18

The (Unbelievable) Kindness of Strangers

Details

Parent Category: News

Created: Friday, 11 July 2025 10:23

The (Unbelievable) Kindness of Strangers

September 1992. After about ten days of rickety Indian buses, army checkpoints, and trekking through dense, humid forest we reached our base camp at 4,000m, below the imposing and alluring unclimbed peak of Tupendeo. It’s a beautiful mountain, referred to by some as the ‘Dru of the Kishtwar’, lying in the border area of Jammu and Kashmir, in a remote valley that sees few western visitors.

After a few days’ acclimatisation, my climbing partner, Angus, and I set off to climb the mountain. Access to it was barred by a steep, boulder-strewn moraine field that led to a small glacier at the base of the main face at 4,900m. We established a cache of gear at what we over-enthusiastically dubbed ‘ABC’. After the first day of climbing we’d made good progress and passed what, from below, looked like the crux section of the wall and were about two-thirds of the way up. The next day it snowed hard and we decided to sit it out on a relatively comfortable ledge; big enough for one of us, with the other perched a few metres above.

^{The striking peak of Tupendeo (5700m)}

The next day was better and we set off up the last section of difficulties, following a steep, snow-filled couloir that led to the summit ridge. As Angus pulled onto the ridge he dislodged a football-sized block. I was not in the fall line but, nonetheless, ducked and got as close to the rock as I could. The very first thing I recall was the sound of a dull thud and then an all-embracing sensation that is hard to describe. It was like every nerve in my body was screaming at me. And then I just started shouting, over and over, ‘my leg, my leg’. The lower part was hanging there, swinging and looked like it was only held on by the clothing. The rock had severed my tibia and fibula and removed a large piece of the front of my shin. Blood was pouring out and I was unable to really comprehend the situation for some time. Eventually, I understood. Yes, I really was mortally injured, incapacitated, and near the summit of an unclimbed peak in a remote part of the Indian Himalaya. Rescue seemed somewhere between improbable and impossible.

Angus put me in a sleeping bag and started the abseil down to get help. It took four days to get me down the mountain and onto the glacier. From here the treacherous, steep and loose moraine field barred our way. By day five I was delirious with gangrene and blood loss and had no idea what was going on. Several people from the local hamlet, Kaban, which was about six hours down the valley, arrived with a makeshift stretcher. It was not until many years later that I learned of the heroic, unprompted effort they had made to carry me down to flatter, safer ground where a helicopter could land.

The recovery was slow and there were many difficult times and dark moments. I’d lost quite a bit of bone and flesh and it was all badly infected alongside frostbite in my foot, which went through my Achilles, all the way to the bone. I had nine operations and was on crutches for four years, but slowly, ever so slowly, I was able to do a little bit more each year.

^{Making the return to the mountain}

Ten years after the accident, two days before my 40^th birthday, I ran a local half-marathon and won by a slim two seconds. That felt like one skeleton I could put back in the closet but there were, for sure, others lurking in the deepest, hard-to-reach parts of my psyche. While the fact that I could still run and still compete felt amazing, there were many things I couldn’t do because of physical and psychological barriers. I did climb (not mountaineer) again with Angus. For our first route together, for reasons passing understanding, we decided to climb the Pat Littlejohn ‘ultra classic’ Crow (E3) in Cheddar Gorge. It sounded amazing but in reality was quite loose and chossy in places, the last thing we wanted after our previous outing together!

Thirty-two years after the accident, in September 2024, I found myself visiting the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore and, as part of that trip, I took part in some fieldwork on a glacier in Ladakh. The week before, myself and a colleague from IISc (my unofficial guide) got on a bus from Jammu-Kishtwar before taking a car to the roadhead from where we hiked up to Kaban. I was met by a welcome party of villagers, several of whom had been part of the original rescue. They placed a khata (a traditional ceremonial scarf) around my neck and I spent three days in the village, meeting my rescuers and being treated like a long-lost son or brother. It was one of the most heart-warming, life-affirming experiences I have ever had. These people owed me nothing, more the reverse, yet they were so pleased, so happy to see me, alive, well and whole. At first, when I tried to explain to them how grateful I was for everything they had done and for saving my life, the words wouldn’t come out, I was so overcome with emotion.

^{Jonathan with his khata at the foot of the peak}

^{With locals in Kaban}

People talk about closure. I don’t really understand what that is when you’ve lost something important to you. There is no such thing for me. It’s about acceptance; embracing a new way of being and a new, different path. Not necessarily worse or better, just different. My journey back to Kaban was not about closure, although we did make a shrine to the gods below Tupendeo, but about accepting and embracing my new path and the beauty in and of the people who saved my life.

 

by Jonathan Bamber

 

 

 

Barry Cliff

Details

Parent Category: People in the news

Created: Monday, 30 June 2025 09:31

We have recently learned of the death on 3 April of Barry Cliff, a member for 60 years.

John Atherton

Details

Parent Category: People in the news

Created: Thursday, 05 June 2025 09:19

We have recently learned of the death in April of John Atherton, who was elected to membership in 1990. The committee wish to convey our sincere condolences to his friends and family at this difficult time.

Colin Powell

Details

Parent Category: People in the news

Created: Wednesday, 04 June 2025 09:22

We are saddened to report the recent death of Colin Powell, who had been a member for almost 50 years.

An End to Weekly Reports?

Details

Parent Category: News

Created: Wednesday, 14 May 2025 15:01

14/05/2025

La Chamoniarde, whose regular conditions reports we used to translate for this news page, have moved away from weekly reporting and instead are providing a continuously updating feed.

While we assess how best to keep providing regular English language reports on mountain conditions in the Mont Blanc Massif, the new feed can be found here.

2025 GRIT&ROCK Grant Recipients Announced

Details

Parent Category: News

Created: Thursday, 08 May 2025 10:08

The Guts to Climb

Details

Parent Category: News

Created: Monday, 31 March 2025 13:15

From single-pitch crags to the Piz Badile, Andrew Taylor shares his journey of learning to climb with a stoma.

We are not very good at talking about toilets and what we do in them. Though we all do the same, some of us do things differently. What follows incudes necessary details about what comes out of us, how it comes out of me, and how I manage this in the mountains. Everyone with a stoma is different and has their own experiences. These are mine. I made some mistakes, and I’m sharing so you don’t have to make the same.

^{Andy seconding the first hard pitch  - Sam Hawkins}

Rock climbing and mountaineering have been a part of my life since attending Belper High School in Derbyshire in the 1980s. The school produced lots of adventurers and climbers, Alison Hargreaves and Nigel Vardy most famously, but plenty more too. Including me.

Following an accident in the spring of 2011, a series of scans offered an explanation for some long-standing bowel symptoms I’d been dealing with. My bowel was inflamed and scarred and not working as it should. I had surgery to remove the bad bit of bowel, but this led to even more scarring, a total bowel obstruction and unimaginable pain. Further surgery was required, this time to remove the now totally blocked bowel and a ‘resection’ to staple the good bits together.

I was warned I may need to have a colostomy or ileostomy, often simply called a ‘stoma’. I had a vague impression of what this meant. I was terrified of yet further indignity and embarrassment. I Googled, and found a couple of people who were open about their ostomy surgeries, one of whom was a climber. One piece of advice resonated immediately: ‘When you go in for surgery, take your climbing harness and ask the surgeon to position your stoma to fit around it.’

^{Pre-op with the potential sites for ileostomy and colostomy marked out - Andrew Taylor}

The pre-op nurse had never had this request before: ‘The surgeon will do what he can. We can’t guarantee a stoma will work in that position. Everyone is different on the inside, you know.’

By this time I was feeling very different on the inside.

As it transpired, the surgery did result in an ileostomy and, luckily, it was placed where we had planned.

The many tears, the pain, discomfort and further indignities of the post-op recovery came and went, along with deep depression around what this change would mean for me. With brilliant support from my partner and wider family, I gradually built up the strength to walk, and to walk further, and then to walk uphill, and then to climb.

Everyone with a stoma is different, but for me, managing a stoma was weird, inconsistent, humiliating. It dominated everything in those first months. I had fixed an embarrassing problem of occasional incontinence by becoming permanently incontinent and constantly, exhaustingly, self-conscious. Dehydration and electrolyte imbalance is a particular problem with an ileostomy. ‘Drink plenty and eat crisps’ was my doctor’s advice.

Climbing regularly with the same partner meant I didn’t have to have too many ‘I need to tell you something’ conversations. On one new route in the Moelwynion, Sam casually shouted up: “Does it matter that your bag fell off?” Looking down I could see it had landed on a ledge just above his head. An unusual kind of ‘near miss’. A quick down-climb and my bag was back on. Sam was a few centimetres away from a direct hit to the head with a bag full of shit…

Somehow Sam kept saying yes to climbing with me and more new routes followed.

Finally fit, I felt ready to get back to the Alps, and to tackle a route that had long been on my wishlist: the Cassin Route on the northeast face of the Piz Badile.

Living now in Scotland, my training involved shunting easy routes at Dumbarton Rock. 30m of easy rock 10 times. Quickly nudging up to 20-30 times a session. I rehydrated with electrolyte solutions and was meticulous in when and what I drank.

^{Bivouac before the climb - Andrew Taylor}

^{Early morning on the approach ledges - Andrew Taylor}

August arrived. We drove through France and Switzerland and arrived at the marvellous Camping Acquafraggia. The weather was set fair for 5 days. It was on.

We ate in the hut, but continued on to the bivouac sites below the start of the North Ridge. From here I was managing rehydration with electrolyte / energy gels and water.

The bivouac proceeded as alpine bivis do. Wake and sleep, wake and sleep. Stars and moon progressing through the sky in snapshots.

4am alarm. Up, and eat – muesli bar, energy gel. We were moving early, but still weren’t first on the face. Sam took the first easy rock pitches to below the Diedre Rebuffat and I led the deidre before we switched to simul-climbing for the next 150m or so. Water supply fine, more energy gel.

Sam – the stronger climber – took the three crux pitches above the big ledges. This was feeling hard. I was struggling. Sam pushed through these pitches brilliantly but I was slower again now. Both dehydrated, I led the deep v chimney of the upper crux (It’d be a thrutchy HVS in Wales for the record.) Some fresh graupel in a deep section of chimney filled water bottles and we pushed on. We were both tired and slow now. More water, more energy gel.

More steep, thrutchy stuff followed. Sam led a pitch, I led a pitch, both properly unsure of how we were still moving, but both somehow managing. Some pegs were pulled on. With headtorches back on, I led a final pitch to the ridge. Moving together along the ridge took longer than it should. By the time we reached the highest point on the ridge we realised we weren’t going to find the hut and a bivouac spot was picked.

^{Andy on the 6a crux - Sam Hawkins}

^{Sam on the upper crux - Andrew Taylor}

This bivouac did not proceed as bivouacs usually do. We both probably slept a little, but at around 2.30am there was a pop as I shifted positions. The energy gels had done what energy gels do and sped things up. My stoma output had rapidly increased. Pressure had built up. Medical adhesive is brilliant, but it follows the laws of physics. The pressure had released, the bag adhesive had blown and a large portion of the contents of my bag had spurted out. Very liquid, very quick to cover almost everything I was wearing.

‘Shit!’ Literal and everywhere. Unhealthy ileostomy output, corrupted by energy gels and green with bile, is foul stuff. My training had not included trialling dietary elements. A major oversight. Somehow I cleaned what I could and reapplied the spare stoma bag I had.

Daylight came with a sunrise clear and pure. We reached the summit spike and then the hut, where we slept.

We were up by 10.30am, heading back along the ridge. The abseils went very smoothly – the new abseil points are carefully planned, but Sam’s attention to detail here was fantastic.

There is a point where the ridge abseil takes you immediately over a large overhang onto the northwest side. Sam went down, clipped the next belay, and I followed. Going over the lip I pivoted sideways, my ileostomy bag caught on the edge and was dislodged. I attempted a quick fix, and continued down. My bag was, by now, properly coming off and my only remaining spares were back at the bivi.

So here we were, Sam and I. Poor Sam. I apologised too many times. Around 500m of abseil remained, only I now had an entirely unprotected ileostomy trickling vile, greenish liquid out into the world, through my shirt, down my leg.

Stoma output is very acidic and soon the unprotected skin around the stoma was beginning to blister. I was so angry with myself – so much training, so much preparation, yet I had neglected something which even in day-to-day life I manage carefully. Big, BIG learning point. Always plan mountain diets, and always test them in advance.

^{Andy abseiling the North Ridge without his stoma bag - Sam Hawkins}

^{The well-earned double breakfast - Sam Hawkins}

The last few abseils led us down to the start ledge and then to the bivi kit. By now I was streaked with green bile, but I had given up apologising out loud. Sam had managed the abs pretty much single-handedly and had somehow coped with my physical and emotional mess. If you have a stoma and you want to climb, you need a partner like Sam.

I quickly found my spare stoma bags and other kit and got immediate relief. We’d been obsessing about a hut dinner all the way down, but instead we simply lay down and slept.

The stars turned, the moon rose and set, and breakfast time came. Sasc Fura breakfasts? We had two each, with coffee. Heaven.

So why have I shared all this? Essentially, I don’t want others in the same situation to feel a stoma is the end of their climbing. I want to demonstrate what is possible, and share some of my stoma-specific learning so others can avoid my mistakes.

Was this the first ileostomy ascent of one of the classic north faces of the Alps? I can’t say it was, but I can’t find other reports. That’s not the point of course. The point is that climbers come in all shapes and sizes, with disabilities and impairments, and with various ways of emptying bowels and bladders.

Since my surgery, Mick Fowler has been public about his colostomy, and is still doing Himalayan first ascents. That’s fantastic! There are a handful of other climbers who are public about their ostomies. So part of my purpose also is to try to find others in my position who want a similar challenge in the future.

What’s next for me? Rock has always been my thing, not ice. The great north faces of the Alps may be where I look. I’m going back to a list of dream routes I made long before I had a stoma. So – a call out to the stoma climbing community – Beckey-Chouinard on the South Howser Spire anyone? Lotus Flower Tower? New routes on the granite of the English Mountains, Labrador?

And look, I promise, this time I won’t be taking any energy gels.

Andy is an advisor to the Adventurous Activities Advisory Committee and instigated the production of guidance for outdoor instructors on managing toileting in the outdoors. Of course, this includes managing people with ostomies, and will be available in early 2025.

Andy can be contacted at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Up Close with Ski Instructor Alison Thacker

Details

Parent Category: News

Created: Saturday, 22 March 2025 12:35

Up Close with Ski Instructor Alison Thacker

AC member Alison Thacker is a former ski competitor who works as a ski instructor, splitting her time between Chamonix, Scotland and Norway. We caught up with Alison to find out a little more about her work, her passion for ski mountaineering and her new practical guide to off-piste skiing.

^{Demonstrating a jump turn}

Could you tell readers a little about your early experiences of skiing?

My parents introduced me to skiing when I was aged 2 by taking my sister and I to a small hill on our local golf course which on snowy days would be full of sledgers and winter sports enthusiasts. They then took us to The Lecht, Scotland where I thought the purpose of skiing was to go up the lifts (as I enjoyed this so much) and you only skied down so that you could go up again!

Throughout my school years we would go to The Lecht almost every weekend through winter, which sometimes started in October and would finish in April. During this time, I became involved in ski racing and travelled abroad for training camps and races. My memory is that the conditions in Scotland became more variable through my teenage years, as the certainty of snow was no longer guaranteed.

How did you discover more adventurous ski mountaineering and can you tell us about some of your best mountaineering experiences on skis?

I’m a keen hillwalker and climber so when I became aware of ski mountaineering this seemed a natural progression for me.  For my BASI instructional qualification there is a Mountain Safety course to complete which I did in Chamonix in 2001. This was my first introduction to Chamonix and ski touring, and I think I knew following that course that my path in skiing was diverging away from ski racing and would take me into more mountainous terrain and away from the lifts.

Skiing in Norway has always been special to me, providing me with some of my fondest ski experiences. There is a couloir on the Lyngen Peninsula ‘The Godmother’ which for us entailed a three-hour boulder strewn and boggy walk in, half an hour of skinning, three further hours boot packing in knee-deep powder, for a 10-minute ski before enduring the 3-hour walk out. I thought it was worth it!

Closer to home, any day skiing in Scotland is memorable as rock and heather free descents are becoming increasingly rare. When conditions in Scotland are good and you can enjoy the view, the ski touring can be world class, as long as you don’t mind a walk to get to the snowline. Skiing Number Two Gully on Ben Nevis has a similar feeling to skiing a couloir in the Dolomites, only a little shorter.

^{One of those perfect Scottish days - skiing powder on Ben Hope}

When you’re working with clients what are the things people most want to learn about skiing off-piste?

There are two common scenarios that I come across numerous times every season. The first goes something along the lines of ‘I ski fine on-piste but I seem to really struggle off-piste and can’t work out the technique for it’. This suggests to me that what they are doing on-piste works, but there are areas for development which will make skiing off-piste less of a struggle. Often, it’s a case of developing on-piste skiing skills with a view to deploying them when skiing off-piste.

The other common scenario is clients wanting to learn how to ski in crust. For climbers, this could be likened to saying ‘I’d like to climb E9’. Now this may be achievable but it all depends on your starting point. If you are currently climbing VDiff, this is unlikely to be achievable in a week’s course. Crust is the most challenging snow type to ski and, in simple terms, the better a skier you become, the easier crust will be. It takes years of refinement, practice, and both physical and mental preparation to be skilful in crust. If there was one quick fix then we’d all be able to ski it (and I would have less work!). It will be quicker (and often safer) to learn how to recognise and avoid crust, rather than become a master in skiing it.

You’ve alluded to the changing nature of ski conditions and ski seasons. How do you see our approach to skiing changing in light of the climate crisis? Will we all be joining you in Norway in search of snow?

There’s how do I see our approach to skiing changing and how do I think it should change. I find myself morally torn between my love of skiing and the fact that pursuing that love has a significant detrimental impact on the planet. When I look at the current situation, I believe we should focus on pursuing sports and activities that are close to our homes and have less environmental impact. Equally, I am acutely aware that such an approach would exclude many from skiing and I am mindful of the health, social and financial benefits that skiing can bring. I’m not a scientist but I am in no doubt that our approach will have to change, with increasing flexibility on how, when and where we ski and ski opportunities becoming increasingly variable.

^{Alison instructing in Norway}

Your new book ‘Off-Piste Performance’ is billed as a practical manual for skiers. Who do you envision using the book and what do you hope they take away from it?

I hope that the book will appeal to all off-piste skiers, from those who are contemplating venturing into off-piste for the first time, to those that are already experienced off-piste skiers and professionals. There is something in there for everyone.

I have written the book that I wish I’d had 20 years ago, but also a book that I will use myself in the future. I envisage that skiers will use the book in a variety of ways from dipping into it throughout the ski season, reading before or after having some lessons to reinforce learning or when practicing for specific snow conditions. Throughout the book are ‘lightbulb moments’, which are quotes from skiers who I have had the pleasure to work with. I hope that readers will come away with their own lightbulb moments from the book, helping to take their skiing to the next level.

Guides to practical skills often face the challenge of translating complex physical movements into text and diagrams. How did you find the process of putting practical skills onto the page?

Immensely challenging! This was one of the reasons for resisting suggestions that I should write a book for so long! Then I found myself using similar books for my other sports – climbing, swimming, mountain biking, and found that they helped me, so my perception about the ability to learn from a book changed.

Taking, sorting and editing photos proved difficult and I was fortunate to work with three very patient photographers. I often say to skiers that photos should rarely be used for analysis as it shows a static skier. Video is a much better tool as it shows the movement. I have thousands of less than ideal photos of me skiing. To get a good one, the angle and timing needs precision. In the book I have sequences of photos which aim to overcome the static problem and show the movement.

When writing, my mantra became ‘let the photos do the talking and the words are there to support the images’. I also tried to use the same words and language that I use when I teach, aiming for the book to sound like the coaching that I would deliver on the hill.

Off Piste Performance: Essential Knowledge for off-piste skiers,
published by Pesda Press, is on sale now.

Leading Through - The Next 6 Years

Details

Parent Category: News

Created: Monday, 03 March 2025 11:10

Leading Through - The Next 6 Years

Priorities, Plans and Projects for the Alpine Club following Blencathra 2024.

In 2018, the Alpine Club, under the leadership of John Porter, began quite an extraordinary process. It dedicated itself to a programme whereby, every six years, it would bring together its members for a large-scale consultation, assessing its organisational health, its relevance and its priorities for the future.

Informed by the feedback from its members following the 2018 event, held at the Blencathra Field Studies Centre in the Lake District, the AC began a journey which, among other developments, has seen the Club rapidly expand its meets programme, provide increasing opportunities for member development and commit itself to growing its digital offering.

When we met for the second ever Blencathra event in November 2024, it was astonishing to consider how much the Club had changed in the preceding six years; cementing significant progress despite the added challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic. There was a sense from attendees that the Club was travelling in the right direction and an enthusiasm to build upon the progress that had already been made.

As well as broader discussions about the AC and the mountaineering world at large, the event focused on five major topic areas – Membership, Our Values, Publications, Heritage and The Soul of the Club – with some consistent priorities emerging across these subjects.

The weekend was alive with ideas, as much in the downtime between formal sessions as in the discussions themselves. We have pulled together some of the clearest priorities and most widely-supported ideas below.

^{The Blencathra Field Studies Centre - Iain Young}

^{AC President Simon Richardson introducing the weekend - Iain Young}

Membership

The Club currently has more than 1,500 members and is attracting increasing numbers of women and younger members thanks to a dedicated focus on broadening our appeal. This was felt to be a healthy size for the Club and efforts to widen our membership through Younger Members' Meets, opportunities for development like the Rick Allen Skills Award and the revitalised ACG, were welcomed. The committee are dedicated to working to maintain our numbers, while continuing to increase the diversity of our membership so that it better reflects the mountaineering community at large.

Some newer members expressed how they had initially found the Club to be intimidating as an institution. We have already made some changes to our events at Charlotte Road to reduce these barriers and will be investigating other ways to actively make new and prospective members feel more welcome at their first Club events.

All the AC events discussed at Blencathra are built on an incredible foundation of voluntary effort and there was a real appetite amongst attendees for more opportunities to become involved in the Club. The committee is already considering the creation of a Volunteer Officer to help encourage and support volunteers. Additionally, we are looking at ways to regularly advertise volunteering opportunities.

Our Values

One of the great successes of 2018’s Blencathra was the creation of the AC Green Group, which has advised the Club on environmental matters and set out Club positions relating to travel and climate change. Sadly, in more recent years, the Green Group has been less active and there was a strong desire among attendees to see it reinvigorated. Happily, volunteers to help make this a reality have already come forward and this process has begun. Watch this space!

There was a general consensus that the Club’s mission statement was in need of a small update and the committee will bring this into review. It was also felt that we should continue to make a positive case for the Club’s values through our communications and by reviving the Spirit of Mountaineering Award, which recognises those who selflessly come to the aid of others in the mountains.

Lastly, there was an appetite for the Club to function as a hub for ‘lessons learned’ when accidents or near-misses occur in the mountains. The exact scope of this potential project and how it would interact with existing systems run by other organisations is currently being considered.

Publications

Throughout the weekend there was a real sense of pride in the Club’s literary legacy but also a degree of regret that it had not remained active in the guidebooks space. As an immediate priority, the Club will be continuing its work to digitise its existing guidebooks, creating an online database which will be made available to members and which can serve as the basis for future progress in this area.

In addition, the work to complete the updated Himalayan Index, a potentially colossal resource for exploratory mountaineers, continues apace, with project lead Lina Arthur recruiting 20 additional volunteers in the period following Blencathra.

The Alpine Journal and Club Newsletter remain valued publications and there was an eagerness from members to suggest potential new areas of focus for future editions. Similarly to the nervousness some members felt when first attending AC events, there was also an occasional reticence from some members to submit to the Journal and Newsletter. We will be working to demystify this process and to consolidate the excellent work done by Ed Douglas in encouraging more women to write for the Journal.

Heritage

From those not already involved with the Club’s collections, there was tangible excitement in learning about the literature, photographs, artefacts and art which the Club holds. We need to spread this awareness more widely, to the membership and the public at large, by making greater use of digital communications and novel forms of presentation to showcase our collections. This will be a key priority for the Library in the coming years, with the groundwork already laid by our hard-working Librarian Emma McDonald.

A perennial problem for our collections is storage. The Club’s premises have limited capacity to store and display heritage items, especially when the demands of work and meeting space are factored in. We will examine ways to make better use of our space and to free up storage by loaning out items to other museums and collections. Our incoming Honorary Secretary, Charlie Burbridge, is already investigating one potential avenue for this.

To ensure that challenges like the issue of space are responded to more proactively in the future, it was recommended that the Club seek to establish a Heritage Board to help coordinate the custodianship, development and showcasing of its collections. Discussions about how this Board will work are already underway.

^{Summit smiles on the 2024 Aspirants Meet}

The Soul of the Club

This final topic might initially appear to be the most nebulous of those discussed, but it actually led to a number of extremely practical suggestions.

The annual Aspirants’ Meet in Sass Fee was singled out for particular praise for the way in which it fostered a sense of community. To build on the work of Nick Hurndall Smith and his team, it was felt that the Club should seek to find locations throughout the Alps in which to base itself for the summer, creating hubs where AC members know they can find each other during the season. The committee is already discussing what is required to make this a reality.

In recent years, the Club has run a number of symposia. These, it was agreed, are a great way of encouraging networking and promoting a sense of belonging. The committee will continue its support for these events in the coming years and investigate potential new topics such as destination-focused sessions.

The Club’s renewed focussing on supporting member development was welcomed and the committee will be making available a complete overview of all our development opportunities in the near future so that members at all levels can see how they can access guidance and support.

Conclusion

These, we hope you’ll agree, are an incredible range of priorities for the Club to work on over the next six years. There is a huge amount that needs to be done in order to make them a success, but if we can do so, the Club will continue to thrive, serving both its members and the wider mountaineering community.

The Club is the sum total of its membership, and our successes, like those we achieve in the mountains, are the result of our collective endeavour. If you’d like to help us make any of these projects a reality, in however small a way, we’d love to hear from you. You can fill out our new AC Volunteer Form and a member of the AC team will be in touch to find out more about how you’d like to be involved.

Finally, the Club would like to thank Sherry Macliver whose organisational work helped to make Blencathra 2024 a reality and Iain Young, our fantastic facilitator from the Scottish Mountaineering Club who lent an invaluable outsider’s eye to proceedings.

Bill Ruthven

Details

Parent Category: People in the news

Created: Monday, 10 February 2025 14:45

The Club is saddened to learn of the death on 4 February of Honorary member Bill Ruthven. Bill was elected a member of the club in 1981 and became Honorary Secretary of the Mount Everest Foundation in 1985. In 2004 he was awarded Honorary membership of the Alpine Club.

You can read Bill's reflections on his work as MEF Honorary Secretary in this 2017 article from the Alpine Journal.

2025 AC Photo Competition

Details

Parent Category: News

Created: Wednesday, 22 January 2025 15:07

Richard Gowing

Details

Parent Category: People in the news

Created: Wednesday, 15 January 2025 13:48

We are saddened to report the death of Richard Gowing on 7 January 2025. He had been a member since 1963.

Richard’s funeral thanksgiving is on Monday 3rd February at 3.00 pm at Wellspring Methodist Church, Congleton – CW12 3AP

Jon Mellor

Details

Parent Category: People in the news

Created: Tuesday, 07 January 2025 14:27

We have recently learned of the death on 14 December of Jon Mellor. He was a member for more that 50 years.

New Study Helps Quantify the Risk of Developing Acute Mountain Sickness

Details

Parent Category: News

Created: Tuesday, 07 January 2025 13:12

New Study Helps Quantify the Risk of Developing Acute Mountain Sickness

A new study by Johannes Burtscher and colleagues at the University of Lausanne has gone some way to helping us estimate the chances of developing acute mountain sickness (AMS) when we ascend quickly to high altitude. Jeremy Windsor explains.

The human body has an incredible capacity to adapt to its surroundings. Nowhere is this more obvious than following an ascent to high altitude. But if you try to rush the process you’re likely to be left exhausted or in some cases, faced with a bout of acute mountain sickness (AMS). But it's not always the case. There are plenty of people who drive out to Chamonix, spend their first night at the Torino Hut (3375m) and climb the Dent du Géant (4013m) the next day. But at the same time there’s quite a few others who spend the night awake and descend exhausted and disappointed the next day. So is there any way to estimate the risk of developing AMS? A new study has attempted to do just that.

Last year, a group of high altitude experts scoured the medical literature and identified 12 studies that quantified the risk of developing AMS at a given height. In seven studies the volunteers ascended slowly over 2 or 3 days, whilst those in the remaining five studies ascended in just a couple of hours.

In those who ascended over 2 to 3 days, the chances of developing AMS increased steadily with height. Whilst noone developed AMS at just over 2000m, 52% of those who ascended to 4559m developed the condition. Meanwhile, those who flew directly to altitudes of between 3350m and 3740m saw their chances of developing AMS range from 39 to 84%. Put simply, the study found that there is a 4.5 times greater risk of AMS if you fly to your high altitude destination compared to if you take a little time and walk to it. 

The 12 studies are divided into 2 groups - those who ascended in hours (orange) or 2 to 3 days (blue). There are often several data points for each study.
The numbers beside the data points are references to the studies identified by Burtscher and his colleagues

For me, this is all much clearer if you take a look at the graph. There are two lines of “best fit” that make it possible to estimate the chances of developing AMS at any given altitude. Using the trip to the Torino Hut (3375m) as an example. If you drive a minibus with ten passengers to Chamonix and jump straight on the Pointe Helbronner cable car, there’s a good chance that almost half of you will develop AMS by the next morning. If instead, you spend a couple of long days cragging on the Brevent, it’s likely that only 1 or 2 will encounter symptoms at the Torino Hut.

The difference is even starker the higher you go. Rapid ascents to 4,000m or more seem to all but guarantee a bout of AMS. However, even short periods of time spent acclimatising at lower altitudes can reduce the risk dramatically. 

All of this seems to confirm what mountaineers have known for a long time, that ascending more slowly reduces the risk of Acute Mountain Sickness. However, having clear probabilities for different altitudes and rates of ascent is of great help with decision-making, particularly for groups who have not previously been to higher altitudes and do not know how they personally cope. It also confirms that even a day or two of acclimatising at lower altitudes is not wasted time, but a way of making a real difference to your risk of developing AMS.

Johannes Burtscher's paper can be downloaded here.

Jeremy Windsor is the director of the Centre for Mountain Medicine at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan)

Report: 3 January 2025

Details

Parent Category: News

Created: Sunday, 05 January 2025 17:52

La Chamoniarde mountain conditions report for 3 January 2025.

Report: 27 December 2024

Details

Parent Category: News

Created: Monday, 30 December 2024 12:37

Rod Smith

Details

Parent Category: People in the news

Created: Monday, 30 December 2024 11:37

It is with great sadness that we report the death of Rod Smith following a fell walking accident in the Lake District.

Rod served as Alpine Journal Obituaries Editor until last year and the Club is deeply indebted to him for his long and diligent service.

Our thoughts are with his friends and family at this difficult time.

Report: 20 December 2024

Details

Parent Category: News

Created: Friday, 20 December 2024 20:21

La Chamoniarde mountain conditions report for 20 December 2024.