The first clue was supplied on EasyJet’s flight from Gatwick to Kos, from where the half-hour ferry to Kalymnos departs. In the check-in queue there was a surfeit of North Face bags and groups in hooded soft shells: climbers. In the past decade Kalymnos, with its pebble beaches and lack of ancient sites, has been transformed from one of the less-favoured Greek islands into an international climbing mecca.

We arrived in Pothia, the island’s biggest town, a jumble of brightly coloured houses, to be met off the ferry by a battered car sent by Sakis Apartments. There were two teenagers in the car listening to Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”. Their mother drove us round the coast to Masouri. The apartment, like the car, had seen better days, but it was very cheap and we didn’t intend to spend much time in it.

Kalymnos is a sport climbing venue with more than 2,000 routes – 100 more were established this winter alone – and with vast tracts of rock still left unexplored. What that means is that the climbs are pre-equipped with permanent drilled-in bolts. So all that is required to climb are rock shoes, a 70m rope and around 20 quick draws (little slings with two carabiners for attaching the rope to the bolts). While it is not without some risk – accidents still occur – it is one of the safer forms of climbing.

It is perhaps because of this that Kalymnos attracts such a wide range of climbers both in terms of age and ability. There are teenage climbers travelling on skateboards, climbers with young families and some in their 70s. The scene around the climbing is laid back and very sociable. Away from the crags, climbers gather to enjoy a cold beer in Masouri’s bars, including the Climbers’ Station or Glaros Snack Bar – owned by British expatriate Steve McDonnell and his wife Sue, who help administer the island’s bolt fund that supplies the hardware to equip new routes.

One day we wandered up to the area of the Grande Grotta, one of the island’s most famous climbing sectors – a vast cave shaped like an open mouth whose roof is festooned with a forest of large hanging stalactites. We sat at the cave’s mouth to watch. High above, a figure was moving improbably among the stalactites, upside down for more than 25m.

Our own destination, however, was not the upside-down world of the Grande Grotta’s roof but another sector just around the corner – more friendly territory in the form of a slab of rising rock that curves into a cave, sharp and as textured as a cheese grater. There was not much for my feet to stand on, only the rough friction of the rock. And at its most difficult section, there was only a tiny scalloped lip big enough for two fingers to hold on to. I stepped up and felt my toes begin to slip, but there was now a larger hold within reach and a bolt which I hastily clipped into. I was tying in to do a second climb when I recognised the man standing belaying next to me, a member of my climbing club who I hadn’t run into for five years. We stopped to catch up while his daughter made easy work of her climb. The week turned out like that. Riding down Masouri’s single main street one afternoon, I recognised two climbers from my local climbing wall, the Castle in north London.

One morning we rode the scooter down the hairpins and round the coast to the tiny village of Emporios. Two beekeepers in their suits were working on a cluster of hives on the slopes above. We parked the bike and followed a rocky gully that led up the hillside to a gorge high above. Kastri, our destination, was a magical spot, a narrow canyon whose mouth was first fortified in the 4th century BC and whose fortifications still remain pretty much intact. Out of the sun it was cool and beautiful, with a flat area carpeted with herbs overlooking the improbably blue sea below, a place as pleasant to relax in as to climb.

On the way home we stopped at the beach at Arginonta. There was a man selling cans of Coke at the kiosk, but no one else on the narrow strand of pale pebbles. We sat with our feet in the water. There was a splash, and a portly figure in a wetsuit roped to a small orange buoy popped out of the sea – a local spear fisherman carrying an octopus in one hand.

It struck me at that moment why Kalymnos felt so special. It is not just the climbing but the sense that genuine island life is still close to the surface – warm, unpretentious and friendly. We left Kalymnos certain that we will return.

The young mountaineer was raising money for the Teenager Cancer Trust.

Calum’s father and sister have both been treated for cancer in the past three years.

Ama Dablam is part of the same range as Mount Everest in Nepal and even experienced mountaineers are said to find the climb technically demanding.

Sir Edmund Hillary, who led the first party to reach the summit of Everest in 1953, once described Ama Dablam as ‘unclimbable’.

Calum, along with the expedition team, ‘Team Ascent’, reached the summit of the mountain on 25 October.

Back in Scotland, he said: “It is amazing to have got to the top, it is a massive sense of achievement, as it was both physically and mentally tiring and needed a lot of determination.”

He said he has always been an ‘outdoors’ person but the expedition was really demanding and not without problems.
“I got hit by a rock fall on the way up, on the leg, fortunately I wasn’t injured but it was quite a scary moment,” he said.

“The general climbing was very hard, but it feels really good to have reached the summit.”

The motivation for the climb stemmed from Calum’s family’s personal battles with cancer.

The teenager was accompanied by his father Dave Morris, the director of Ramblers Scotland.

Mr Morris had his voice box removed this year following treatment for cancer.

A chest infection stopped him climbing to the summit with his son, although he did manage to get to 20,000ft.

He said: “I waited at base camp but due to the nature of the mountain you can watch the upper slopes with binoculars.

“So for most of the day I could see the summit party crawling their way slowly up to the summit so it was quite worrying. But at the same time incredibly satisfying when we saw all the climbers return to the top camp.”

Calum returned to Scotland this week and he is still acclimatising to the warmer weather in Scotland, but he said he would like to go back to the Himalayas in the future and maybe try to conquer Mount Everest.

Most of us, however, are content to admire it from the town square or from a chairlift. Climbing the Matterhorn is a risky enterprise requiring experience and fitness, even if you hire a mountain guide. But if you’re a fit walker and want to experience some of the thrill of Alpine climbing without taking on the Matterhorn, then Zermatt is an ideal place to have a go. Some of the most accessible peaks in the Alps surround the St Nicholas valley where Zermatt nestles.

There are 82 summits in the Alps over 4,000m (13,000ft), the altitude with cachet in Europe. Easiest of them all is the Breithorn, the Matterhorn’s snowy next-door neighbour and the ideal vantage point from which to view the superstar peak. You won’t have to splash out on expensive equipment if you have a ski jacket and a warm pullover. The Breithorn requires only crampons, a climbing harness and a ski stick, equipment that can be hired easily in Zermatt for the day. The town’s guides bureau runs group tours to the summit daily in summer, weather permitting, for €103 per person. If you’ve never used crampons before, the guides are there to show you how. All they suggest is doing a few hikes beforehand to acclimatise.

The Breithorn is a big friendly giant for one reason – the cable car that runs to within 365m of its summit. Early on a June morning of threatening skies and strong winds, I found myself shouldering my way into a cabin for a ride that would lift me almost 2,300m above the valley. That’s a Ben Nevis with a Scafell Pike glued on top that my creaky knees wouldn’t have to go up and down.

Despite the bad weather and early hour, the cabin was full of middle-aged men who appeared to be greyhound fit. The Swiss tourist board, it transpired, had arranged for our ascent to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the Alpine Club, the very first mountaineering club in the world founded, rather improbably, not in the Alps, but in Ashley’s Hotel in Covent Garden.

Almost every peak overlooking Zermatt was first climbed by hyperactive Englishmen, establishment types like lawyers, dons and churchmen, accompanied by local guides picking up a little extra cash to supplement their farming incomes. In fact, the English more or less invented the whole madcap enterprise of climbing mountains for fun in the first place.

Now I found myself squeezed alongside the descendants of those pioneers, including Doug Scott, the first Englishman to climb Everest in 1975. Unlike the rest of us in our bright Gore-Tex, Scott was dressed for the elements in a waxed shooting jacket and an Aussie bush-hat.

‘You remind me of someone,’ I tell him.

‘Worzel Gummidge?’

‘Close.’

‘Michael Foot?’

‘That’s it.’

A couple of years ago I had seen Scott struggling to cross a room let alone a glacier, reduced to walking with crutches on knees ruined not by mountaineering, but from playing rugby into his 40s. Now 66, it was nice, he told me, to be climbing again without pain.

Also near at hand was Stephen Venables, the AC’s current president and the first Englishman to climb Everest without bottled oxygen, and by a new route as well. But the real eminence was George Band, one of the Everest pioneers with Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953. He was also the first man to climb Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain, two years later. Now 78, he had mustered a team to accompany him in stately grandeur to the summit.

It was a good job I was in such illustrious company. As the cable car slowed to enter the summit station, it was buffeted by strong winds and all the climbers looked doubtfully through the windows into swirling mist. As the doors opened a blast of crisp, freezing air swept round us and I zipped up my jacket.

The small team of guides keeping us safe disappeared along the tunnel leading outside to the glacier to establish if the ascent was on. It was clear that under normal circumstances and with regular clients they wouldn’t have left the valley in the first place. But given the occasion and the fact that half the party had at some point jogged up Everest, it seemed we were good to continue.

Conditions outside were bracing. The wind leant against us and thick cloud sped across the summit above. The good news was that the low temperatures had left the glacier frozen, meaning that we could walk easily on the surface rather than sink in half-melted slush. The climbing itself seemed no more difficult than walking up a steep Scottish hillside, albeit waddling like a duck to avoid tripping over my crampons.

At first the view wasn’t up to much. If you’ve seen the inside of one cloud, you’ve seen them all. But as morning wore on the wind tore holes in the grey mass, revealing a brilliant world of dazzling snow and ice and cobalt skies beyond. By the time we reached the summit, I felt wonderfully invigorated by the cold sharp air. No wonder tuberculosis sufferers got packed off to the Alps. Annoyingly, though, the peak’s celebrity neighbour remained elusive all morning, only to re-emerge as we boarded the cable car that carried us swiftly back to the valley.

Climbing mountains is the business on which Zermatt’s prosperity was founded – before the wacko English stopped by, locals sweated long hours in the fields and pastures – and the first ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865 and its tragic aftermath gave Zermatt a rather grisly unique selling point and sent its fame soaring. On his sixth attempt, Edward Whymper became the first man to reach the summit, but of the seven-strong team he led out from the Monte Rosa Hotel, only three returned. One of the dead was Lord Francis Douglas, younger son of the Marquess of Queensberry. The accident caused a scandal in the British press and became a defining moment in mountaineering history. You can see in the Zermatt museum the remnant of the rope that snapped as the doomed climbers fell. Tourists rushed to see the focus for so much obsession and tragedy. That strange combination of horror and fascination of the Matterhorn still attracts more than 2,000 climbers each year. They often have to queue to reach its summit.

But these are changing times on the mountain, as climate change takes a grip. Willy Taugwalder is a distant relative of the two guides who survived the first ascent. In the past, he says, guides wouldn’t ask clients too many questions about their previous experience, but those days are long gone. Now guides pay close attention to their clients’ skill level, asking for proof that they’re up to the climb.

‘If someone shows up and says, “I want to climb the Matterhorn,” of course you can take the guy up there, but you have to turn around so many times because they have no clue about what’s involved,’ he says. ‘They fail, they’re disappointed and they’ve paid the money anyway. So we ask them to do one training climb with us before the Matterhorn.’

The Matterhorn does not come cheap. Zermatt guides charge €793 for the nine-hour climb, with a night in the hut the night before thrown in. The required training climb will set you back another €300, and then there’s accommodation in the valley, which can be eye-wateringly expensive. Hardly surprising, then, that fewer than one in 10 ascents of the Matterhorn are made by guided parties.

Taugwalder says that newcomers to the mountain often lose the route, threatening others below when they knock off loose stones. Climate change is also having an impact. During the hot summer of 2003 a gigantic rock fall peeled off the mountain, a likely consequence of climate change. Taugwalder was working on the mountain that day and narrowly escaped. But he accepts his place of work is hazardous with or without the effects of global warming. ‘In the mountains erosion is always happening. You need luck not to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

Ski touring, he says, has been most affected by rising temperatures. When he qualified as a guide, he was still working into late May. Now he’s lucky to work beyond late April. ‘And the north faces are changing for sure. Ice and snowfields disappear sooner and there is more rock fall. That means you have to climb these routes in May and not in the high season.’
But overall, Taugwalder is more anxious about the state of his knees than the state of the Matterhorn. Catching a glimpse of the mountain, still caked in snow in late June, as I leave the bar where we meet, I can sympathise. One of us has a lot more time than the other.

The travelled with our family’s first digital camera, an Olympus 2.1 megapixel beast (which is substantially smaller than the underused camera on my new cell phone), which nonetheless brought back some gorgeous pictures of Pokhara and its jaw-dropping surrounds. These included atmospheric photographs of canoes on Pokhara’s lake in the early morning sun, where beams of light play in low-hanging mist above still black water. Taking to a canoe myself on that lake on a bright late-autumn morning almost exactly five years to the week later, I was struck by the incredible play of light in the leaves hanging from the island, and craved my own camera which had tragically given up the ghost ten days earlier at Annapurna Base Camp- possibly the most painful episode of my photographic career to date.

Other photos included some spectacular shots of the Annapurna Himal at dawn, most prominent of which being Machapuchare- which is also visible from the rather posh resort my folks stayed at (and at which Laura, Lydz and myself certainly did not stay at) looming its jagged face over the countryside. It is a striking sight and a feature of almost any photograph of the town, and long before I ever set foot in Nepal I had its name and form memorized from studying the pictures with awe.

My first view of Machapuchare was from the window of our small Yeti Air flight as it cruised into Pokhara’s little airstrip after a thirty-minute flight from Kathmandu on a cloud-free fall afternoon. It is a devastatingly beautiful sight, rearing up above the green foothills with its needle-sharp point piercing the sky, and it’s easy to see why it’s called the Matterhorn of the Himalaya. By no means the highest peak in the Annapurna Range- it sits at 6,993m in a massif dominated by mountains more than a vertical kilometre higher- it is known for its prominence- that is, its elevation relative to the surrounding land (or put simply, how much it sticks out from the rest of the range). In this it is one of the world’s more remarkable mountains to look at.

Machapuchare changes as you travel around it. It forms one of the anchors of the Annapurna Base Camp trek (together with Annapurna South). While Annapurnas II and IV swing out of sight after the first couple of days, and Annapurnas I and III really only show up towards the end of the trek, Machapuchare is rarely out of sight for the entire journey, and for my part, my eyes were rarely off it. From the south (Pokhara), it resembles the classic off-kilter Matterhorn with its steep angled ridges and pyramidal peak, but as you cross below its western face (craning your neck to catch glimpses of it between the rock-towers above Deurali) it shows its true structure, and the twin peaks seperated by a narrow cleft demonstrate how it takes its nickname, “Fish Tail”, resembling the tail of a fish plunging back into a lake. When you finally reach the Sanctuary and Annapurna Base Camp and view it from the north, it has once more taken on a pyramidal form, not as visibly prominent from its surroundings, but now shown as the massive mountain it truly is and the tremendous range that its axis holds together.

Machapuchare is considered sacred by locals as a place where gods come down and set foot on earth, and it’s not hard to see how the belief came about, as it is a truly special sight. It has never been climbed, and the only expedition to be granted permission to climb it was obliged to promise that they would not actually set foot on the summit. They climbed to within 50m of the summit, then turned around and came back down- a feat of impressive mountaineering overshadowed by a far more remarkable feat of self-control for a mountaineer! It is now declared sacred and off-limits for climbing parties.

I share these few photos to show its different faces and moods, and hope I can inspire you to pay it a visit someday. Regretably (due to the death of my Canon EOS 350D minutes after the previous photograph shown here was taken) I do not have as many photographs of the mountain as I might have liked, and I missed some truly exceptional light on her face on our evening at Annapurna Base Camp. Which is all the more reason for me to go back and pay my respects another time, and soon…

Located in Parque Nacional Los Glaciers, Argentina’s National Park, Mount Fitz Roy is the most popular trekking destination in all of Argentine Patagonia.

Mount Fitz Roy has several trailheads, most of which start directly in the town of El Chalten. The closest airport to Mount Fitz Roy is in Calafate. Several buses run daily directly from Calafate to El Chalten. Upon entry to town, all buses stop at the park office and the entire bus unloads to hear a brief talk about the park and it’s trails. The town’s main industry is tourism and it does an excellent job of helping travelers prepare for Fitz Roy.
El Chalten is a well-planned, small resort community with accommodations ranging from budget hostels to luxury hotels. Catering to the traveler, there are restaurants and coffee shops a plenty, as well as small tourist shops that carry local products. Companies also offer many other types of excursions such as fishing, horseback riding, and rock climbing trips.
Trek Options
Argentina has put no small effort into making this destination ready for trekkers. The park boasts meticulously maintained trails and well-marked paths. Many kilometers into the park, the paths are still perfectly cut and occasionally even lined with stones.
Multi-Day Trekking
Numerous trailheads and many paths give trekkers great flexibility in planning their route. Trips can last from 2-5 days depending on how many areas the hiker desires to see and side trails they opt to hike. While camping is only permitted in designated camping areas, there are many throughout the park and it is not hard to plan your route around them. All the camping areas are located near water sources and outhouses.

Day Hikes: Prefer to sleep in a warm bed every night with delicious Patagonian lamb served in quaint restaurants? Thanks to proximity of El Chalten, the park is almost entirely accessible on a series of day hikes and many stores offer box lunches. Pack some water, grab a map, and enjoy hikes varying from 2-8 hours each.

This trip is perfect for those who want to gain mountaineering skills and high altitude experience, prefer a shorter trip, or just wish to acclimatize to the Andes. Beginners and experienced climbers alike will enjoy these climbs. Each peak has an easy/moderate route on easy snow, and a challenging technical variation, to the summit.

Mules will carry our gear to each Base Camp, and to High Camp on El Plomo. We will carry our own loads to High Camp on La Paloma, but will be able to climb with a daypack on the rest of all 3 peaks.

We begin our trip by climbing La Paloma (16,269′) and El Altar (17,610′), two fantastic peaks only a day away from the city of Santiago. At the base, we will be in the presence of magnificent hanging glaciers, surrounding glacial peaks, and the technical South Face of El Altar.
After 4 days of climbing we will return to Santiago to rest and recover, departing again the next morning for our 3rd and final objective, El Plomo, (18,018′). El Plomo is to Santiago what Mt Rainier is to Seattle, a symbol which rises an impressive 17,000′ over the city. Surrounded by glaciers, El Plomo is the most attractive peak in the Central Andes close to Santiago.

We begin with a short hike to Piedra Numerada, where mules carry our gear. Then we move to our High Camp at 13,800′ at the base of El Plomo’s hanging glacier. This glacier offers both a fantastic 12-pitch route on moderate ice, as well as an easy trail to the right, the “Normal Route”. On the way to the summit we will see an ancient mummy sanctuary built by the Incas centuries ago. From the summit is one of the most magnificent views of the Chilean Central Andes, encompassed by 20,000′ peaks, including Aconcagua, Juncal, Tupungato, and many more.

The climb to Rif. Fonda Savio turned out to be pretty easy, but the clouds still intermittently covered everything. Eschewing more ambitious, committing goals, we turned south and followed the Sentiero Bonacossa up the steep, loose Forcella del Diavolo under the triple horns of Cima del Diavolo and down the equally steep trail into Cadin di la Neve to the south. The descent was equipped with ladders and cables in places and we’d brought full ferrata gear ‘just in case’. But these trail augmentations were of an entirely different order from what we saw yesterday and we felt quite comfortable going unprotected.

Cadin di Neve was a rather barren (though spectacular!) valley full of scree, so we didn’t linger and climbed directly up the other side via a very entertaining trail to Forcella di Misurina on the southernmost ridge of the Cadini. We climbed in the fog up a series of easy cables and enjoyed a second lunch on our second Forcella (pass) of the day. Things cleared up as we dropped down the south side and we were rewarded with a stunningpanoramic view of Misurina directly below, the impressive bulk of Cristallo beyond, the Sorapis, Monte Piana and more. The hike to Rif. Col de Varda was a nice down-hill stroll and the hike down the ski slopes and across to the trail head a wonderful cap to the day of exploration. It had finally become totally clear and we could now see the views we’d missing in the morning fog lit by strong afternoon sun.

World Expeditions is one of the biggest operators, running over 20 treks this year, with accommodation a mixture of camping and lodges on the classic standard trek to Everest base camp. An 18-day trek costs £1,650, which it can also arrange. Some of its autumn departures are already full, so hurry if you want to go in the diamond jubilee year of the first ascent.

If you prefer a bit more comfort, there are now two chains of luxury lodges on the way to base camp, Yeti Mountain Homes and Everest Summit Lodges. We’re not talking five-star spas here, but an en suite bathroom and a hot water bottle are a big step up from standard lodges.
Specialist trekking company Mountain Kingdoms offers a 19-day package starting at £2,245 that also offers nights at Kathmandu’s stunning heritage hotel, Dwarika’s.

If you’re looking to beat the crowds, trekking guide Bonny Masson has this advice: “If you’ve got the time, do the original trek the British expedition took in 1953.” This started in Kathmandu, but a bus will now take you to the end of the road just beyond the town of Jiri. The trail beyond is a tougher walk than the stages from Lukla, which most people now reach by air. “You’ll get a better slice of life in Solukhumbu and the trails are quieter.” Alternatively you can trek out of season, in December or February, when numbers are down and the trails are quieter. But you should be prepared for lower temperatures.

Adventurous types can trek to the little-visited east face of Everest inside Tibet via the Kama valley, one of the least known but most beautiful approaches to the world’s highest peak. Unlike the Nepalese side, this wild valley has hardly changed at all. In recent years, the visa situation in Tibet has been inconsistent, but that now seems to be settling down. KE Adventure Travel offers a 20-day trip out of Kathmandu, including nine days of trekking, for £2,995.

Gentle trekking
If trekking was developed for explorer types who see disaster as a welcome change of pace, then the industry has done a great deal to broaden its appeal. Young backpackers have been wandering around the foothills of Nepal’s Annapurna range for decades now, arriving in Pokhara by bus and surviving on next to nothing. World Expeditions offers an off-the-peg 11-day equivalent for newbie trekkers from £990, which takes in the pretty villages of Landruk and Ghandruk. You won’t sleep higher than 2,500 metres but you’ll still get stunning views of the Annapurna range and the colossal pyramid of Dhaulagiri, seventh-highest peak in the world.

The Mountain Company offers an 11-day beautiful village walk in India’s Kumaon mountains in Uttarakhand. You stay in basic but homely accommodation en route, on easy trails between villages, and end with a few days at the luxurious and very relaxing Himalayan retreat Shakti 360° Leti (a 10-night package including accommodation in Delhi is £2,576pp).

Once kids get over the initial shock of the idea that a walk can last for days, not hours, trekking can be a brilliant family trip option. Exodus offers a great itinerary in Ladakh for families that takes in visits to Tibetan monasteries, rafting on the Indus and a three-day trek that crosses the Sarmanchan La, a pass that reaches 3,750m. Prices start from £1,899, including flights, and the trip is suitable for ages eight plus.

Nepal is also a great place to take children, combining a trek with a visit to Chitwan national park, close to the border with India, where they can see wildlife and ride elephants. Steve Webster is a long-time resident of Nepal who runsEscape2Nepal, a small travel company specialising in “soft” adventures that are just right for children – its 15-day family adventure trip costs £1,720pp. He also has a quiet guesthouse, Shivapuri Heights, on the outskirts of Kathmandu, away from the ever-increasing noise of Thamel, the city’s tourist district.

Wild trekking
Although tourism in the Himalayas is changing fast, it’s still possible to do a big trek in the wildest landscape on Earth. These really are for the hardier trekker, with weeks of camping and a tolerance for serious walking and high altitude. In Pakistan’s spectacular Karakoram mountain range, there are fewer villages in the high mountains, and treks feel remote and exploratory.

The jewel in the crown is the trek to K2’s base camp, taking you past some of the most beautiful peaks you’ve probably never heard of, like the Trango Towers and Masherbrum, before reaching Concordia, the confluence of two mighty glaciers with spectacular views of K2 itself. It takes around 15 days, walking eight miles a day, to reach base camp and leave via the Gondoro La, a pass of over 5,400m, into the beautiful Hushe valley. Previous trekking experience is essential. KE Adventure offers a 22-day itinerary starting at £2,495.

While the Annapurna massif is as beautiful as ever, the construction of a road up the Kali Gandaki, the world’s deepest gorge, to link Pokhara with the Tibetan border, has abruptly terminated interest in trekking the well-established Annapurna circuit. No one wants to trek beside a road. A new road is also being driven on the eastern side of the massif, towards the village of Manang.

Luckily for Nepal’s trekking industry, the long and arduous trek around Manaslu, higher than Annapurna and just to its east, is plugging this self-inflicted wound. Mountain Kingdoms offers a slightly different route in the early part of this increasingly popular trek that makes each one of the 18 days it takes to loop around the Manaslu Circuit’s remote north side as culturally fascinating as it is spectacular. The trip costs £1,725 and is the perfect introduction to the wilder side of Himalayan trekking.

If those two aren’t enough for you, then consider the Great Himalayan Trail , which traverses the length of Nepal’s high mountains, broken down into 10 sections, each of which takes around two to three weeks. The Mountain Company is offering the first section – between the world’s third-highest mountain Kanchenjunga and Makalu – this October from £3,195.

Official Climbing Season

Early July to mid September is the official climbing season when the trails and mountain facilities are open. During this period the mountain is usually free of snow, the weather is relatively mild, access by public transportation is easy, and the mountain huts are operating. Anyone without much hiking experience is advised to tackle the mountain during the official climbing season. The specific dates depend on the year and trail. In 2015 they are set as follows:

• Yoshida Trail: July 1 to September 14, 2015
• Subashiri, Gotemba and Fujinomiya Trails: July 10 to September 10, 2015

The Crowds

Climbing Mount Fuji is very popular not only among Japanese but also foreign tourists, who seem to make up more than a third of all hikers. The peak season for climbing Mount Fuji is during the school vacations which last from around July 20 to the end of August. The peak of the peak is reached during the Obon Week in mid August, when climbers literally have to stand in queues at some passages.

While you may want to avoid the Obon Week, we believe that by avoiding the crowds in general, you would miss out one of the most interesting aspects of climbing Mount Fuji, which is the camaraderie and unique experience of ascending the mountain among hundreds of equally minded people from across the world.

In order to encounter neither too large nor too small crowds, we recommend to climb Mount Fuji on a weekday in the first half of July before the start of the school vacations. The downside of a climb in early July is the weather, which tends to be somewhat more unstable than later in the season.

Timing

Most people try to time their ascent in order to witness the sunrise from the summit. Also, the chances of the mountain being free of clouds are highest during the early morning hours.

The recommended way of doing this, is to climb to a mountain hut around the 7th or 8th station on the first day and spend some hours sleeping there before continuing to the summit early on the second day. Note that the sunrise takes place as early as 4:30am to 5:00am in summer.
Another popular way is to start climbing the mountain in the late evening from the 5th Station and hike through the night to reach the summit around sunrise. This is a more tiring way of climbing the mountain and is discouraged by the local authorities as it brings an increased risk of altitude sickness (see below) and injury.

Ascending and descending the mountain in a single day during daytime is also possible, but again it is not recommended for the same reasons as above. Furthermore, the mountain provides very little shelter, leaving climbers fully exposed to the sun. Visibility also tends to be worse during daytime when the mountain is frequently wrapped in clouds.

A walk around the crater of Mount Fuji takes about one hour. The mountain’s and Japan’s highest point is located immediately next to the weather station on the opposite side from where the Yoshida Trail reaches the peak.

Via Ferrata History

Whilst the construction of via ferrata is often attributed to the First World War there are several routes that predate 1914. There is some debate as to which is the oldest via ferrata in the Dolomites, though it is generally accepted to be either the Marmolada West Ridge or Delle Mèsules (Possnecker Path), with some reports of the former being constructed as early as 1903.

Nevertheless it was the arrival of the First World War to the Dolomite mountains that provided the catalyst for construction of via ferrata en masse. Both the Italian and Austro-Hungarian armies in the area found the wires invaluable for moving men and supplies through previously inaccessible areas. Via ferrata were constructed to defend key positions and were often the site of vicious fighting. The legacy of this terrible conflict can still be witnessed on many of the routes, with the tunnels (Giovanni Lipella), trenches (Eterna Brigata Cadore), officer quarters (Ivano Dibona), lookout positions (Delle Scalette), field hospitals (Col dei Bos/Degli Alpini and Ettore Bovero) and even an original field gun (Via delle Trincee – La Mesola) still in evidence today.

Following the war many of the via ferrata were re-equipped by CAI and used as a means of attracting tourists to the area. This was a slow process until the 1950s which saw an explosion in tourism to the area. This sudden influx of visitors rapidly led to increased environmental concerns and led to the expansion being curtailed in favour of just maintaining the pre-existing routes.

More recently some new via ferrata have been constructed in the area, the first ‘modern’ route being Sandro Pertini. Built in Vallunga, an area covered under the EU’s ‘Natura 2000’ environmental protection policy, the route was shrouded in controversy as many felt the route had been built purely to commercial ends with a disregard for the environmental impact. The route was closed temporarily before being officially sanctioned by the EU in 2008, setting a precedent for other new routes to be built in the area. Ski Club 18 above Cortina was constructed in 2009 to ‘enrich the mountaineering tradition’ of the area, and named after the Rome ski club of the same name, whilst Magnifici Quattro in the Van San Nicolò follows part of a First World War route and was named in honour of four mountain rescue members who were tragically killed in an avalanche whilst attempting a rescue in 2009.

For more information on the First World War in the Dolomites I highly recommend The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front by Mark Thompson which is an eye opening read. His talk at this year’s Kendal Mountain Festival was both excellent and enlightening.