Among the dead was Rob Hall, one of the most highly acclaimed mountaineers in the world. He ran out of oxygen attempting to rescue a stricken climber. He collapsed from a lethal combination of exhaust...
Along the way, though, I was always careful not to get greedy or to go for the quick buck--despite the temptations in the early days.Financially, it was hard saying no to big appearance fees from TV s...
When you stand at the bottom of a mountain, you can rarely see a clear route to the top. It is too far away and the path too twisty and hidden behind obstacles. There’s a quote from Martin Luther King...
The meeting was set for between 0300 and 0500 hours.Matt and I reached the RV early and sat and waited.Deep in a thorny thicket, the wind and rain having returned now, I pulled my hood over my head to...
The final magic ingredient has been a willingness to risk it all. All in. No questions asked.The program started, and grew, from a determination to push the boundaries. Do the impossible. Climb the im...
So many people I have met over the years walk around carrying a heap of emotional hang-ups that weigh them down.Maybe it’s the burden of parental expectations that makes them pick a job based on what...
Psalm 121 says:Good person to have on side, I always figure.
One of the optional subjects that we could study at Eton was motor mechanics, roughly translated as find an old banger, pimp it up, remove the exhaust, and rag it around the fields until it dies.Perfe...
Let me give you one of my favorite examples of the difference between trying and endeavoring.When a new motorway was built, taking passing traffic away from Colonel Sanders’ restaurant, his business c...
If you want it bad enough, you’ll pass.
I remember, one week, we all started playing strip poker., I thought. It wasn’t really even poker, but was more like: pick an ace and lose an item of clothing. I tried one night to rig the cards so th...
Their main criticism of the kind of books and talks that motivate and inspire people is that the impact is often fleeting - that the effects of the book or talk don’t last.My response is to say: of co...
They are never sufficiently tested. This means I’ve got two good pieces of news for you. The first is that whenever you do something beyond your ‘comfort zone’ and realize you are still standing, the...
Whatever doesn’t kill you only serves to make you stronger. And in the grand scheme of life, I had survived and grown stronger, at least mentally, if not physically.I had come within an inch of losing...
On the third day, I asked if she would like to climb Ben Loyal with me--with anyone else who fancied coming along. None of the guys wanted to join me and I ended up with a group of four girls, includi...
But there are men for whom the unattainable has a special attraction. Usually they are not experts: their ambitions and fantasies are strong enough to brush aside the doubts which more cautious men mi...
I remember in the North African desert once, when we were training with the French Foreign Legionnaires, that we had a particularly unpleasant night. The corporals took shifts to ensure that we were w...
You're not human if you don't feel fear. But I've learnt to treat fear as an emotion that sharpens me. It's there to give me that edge for what I have to do.
Take a look at one of the greatest inventors to have ever lived, Sir Isaac Newton. In a letter to his great rival Robert Hooke, he wrote that his work on the theory of gravity had only been possible b...
Sometimes an ember is all we need.