GRIT&ROCK Blog

'The yaks broke free and escaped last night'...Hmmm, that was not planned. Standing in front of 200kg of gear and duffel bags I had hard time imagining an 'escape act' from a trio of these rotund and phlegmatic creatures... but there it was the very first crux of our first … [Read more...]

  Cholatse may have been an odd choice for an acclimatisation peak on our way to do a first ascent of Kangchung Shar. This remarkable summit is a formidable objective on its own. Rarely climbed it stands proudly in spitting distance from Everest. Novice to … [Read more...]

Reportedly, somebody asked Edmund Hillary on his way back from a successful first ascent of Everest in 1953 whether he would consider climbing Ama Dablam. His reply was 'It can't be done!' A few years later, in 1961, an American team that included Barry Bishop (Brent … [Read more...]

    As we are walking down from the summit of Denali at midnight, I gain a second wind. I now lead the team down an exposed steep ridge. We are still very high at over 17,000ft. Clouds form a cotton wool blanket over the valley. Only Mounts Foraker and … [Read more...]

  Yesterday, on June 11 2016, at 8pm AKS our team has made a small contribution to mountaineering history. Oswald Freire and Joshua Jarrin, my Equadorian climbing partners, became the first South Americans to summit Denali via the Cassin ridge, the biggest single … [Read more...]