Category: Living Adventurously
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Risking the Mountains
Here is a video made by my friend Patrick O’Hara. Filmed in the Haute Marienne region of the French Alps, British Mountain Guide Andy Teasdale talks about risks and decision making in the mountains. (If the above window’s not playing the video then you can try watching it on Vimeo).
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Austerity
My wife thinks I want to be a monk. Or at least that I aspire to a monastic lifestyle. It’s a reference to some of my more austere preferences in life. As evidence, she would cite my obsession with paring down belongings in the name of minimalism (even if it means getting cold, wet and…
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Book Review: Call of the White by Felicity Aston
Call of the White: Taking the World to the South Pole, is Felicity Aston’s account of her project to create a team of women from eight different Commonwealth countries, with no polar experience, and get them all to ski to the South Pole. This included taking women from places like Jamaica, Brunei and Ghana –…
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Images from Bhutan
The Kingdom of Bhutan is a prized destination for many travellers. My wife, Laura, was lucky enough to visit there two years ago and I’ve only just dug out her photos to share… [divide] The Tiger’s Nest Monastery The view to Kachenjunga Unusual building decoration in Paro Yaks in the mountains with bells attached to…
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What Adventures Are Left?
An excellent, thoughtful and well-researched article appeared on the BBC News website this week which posed the question: What adventures are left? I would highly recommend you read it. I sent in my comments in response but they’ll probably never see the light of day so thought I’d add them here too… 1. Winter North…
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Heart Rates – How Low Can You Go?
It wasn’t that long ago that I first got my hands on a heart rate monitor. I’ve never been sufficiently into the minutiae of fitness training (or dedicated enough?) to apply any kind of science to it, like using a heart rate monitor, but I do love a good competition. Particularly if it’s with myself.…
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Feedback (and blog updates once a week from now on)
The Next Challenge blog has been running consistently for three and a half years. For the last two years I have posted new articles twice a week, every week, at 7am every Monday and Thursday. The only exceptions to that were whilst away on expedition when updates were more sporadic from the field. Obviously, this…
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One Man’s Journey of a Lifetime – Lloyd Figgins
I recently designed a new website for adventurer and safety expert Lloyd Figgins. Lloyd is currently preparing for the rather bold challenge of running 1,200 miles from Lands End to John O’Groats. But today he is sharing his experiences from his 2011 row across the Atlantic Ocean. [divide] Atlantic Calling by Lloyd Figgins The catalyst…
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Facebook Competition
Right, last chance to win a free copy of my book How to Get to the North Pole and Other Iconic Adventures. To enter the draw, all you have to do is ‘Like’ The Next Challenge on Facebook. You can do that by clicking the button below. You can use the ‘Send’ button to pass…
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That’s All from the Book (and some nice pictures)
Over the last five months I’ve been slowly releasing a series of short extracts from my book as blog posts on this site. It was partly to help promote the book and partly because I know that not everyone will buy a copy so I wanted to share some of the more useful sections. Anyway,…
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Climbing Terminology
Climbing is filled with a lot of jargon. Some of the terms in particular define key concepts for mountaineering so getting your head around them can be quite fundamental. Below are a few useful bits of terminology. [divide] [box type=”note” bg=”#ebebeb” color=”#111″ font=”arial” fontsize=”13″ border=”#a6a6a6″ head=”How To Climb An Unclimbed Mountain” headbg=”#21417b” headcolor=”#fff”] This is…