Mountaineering in Afghanistan

Afghanistan might not be everyone's idea of a holiday destination but adventurous climbers are starting to return to the country's mountainous Hindu Kush area. In the Winter issue of Summit, David James writes how it's packed full of unclimbed peaks, near perfect weather and is an ideal introduction to high altitude mountaineering. As for danger - as in the Taliban, rather than avalanches and rock-falls - he writes:

"the remote and and mountainous Wakhan corridor has remained entirely peaceful ...you're more likely to see a yeti in the Wakhan than the Taliban."

James, a former news cameraman and ex-soldier, has set up Mountain Unity International, a company that aims to promote the mountaineering and trekking industries in the region. Since 2003 a small group of Afghans have undergone training as mountain guides while a series of guesthouses and campsites have been established. All profits and assets are locked into supporting the Afghan people.

From the 1960s up until the Soviet invasion of 1979, the country was an extremely popular destination for European climbers. However, no mention of the region can be made without reference to Eric Newby's A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, his memoir of an attempt to climb a virgin peak. In a review for the Observer, John Morris commented that the tale would "horrify conventional mountain explorers and even less ambitious travellers with some sense of organisation", while concluding that it was the funniest travel book he had ever read (October 26 1958).

Scott of the Antarctweet

The diary entries of the Antarctic explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott are published on Twitter today, nearly 100 years after they were originally composed. Daily postings will be made by Cambridge University's Scott Polar Institute, which holds many of the doomed explorer's manuscripts, to mark the centenary of his final journey.

The first entry, dated November 26 1910, tells how his team boards their ship in New Zealand. The final one will be on March 29 1912, the day he and his comrades died.

The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst

There is yet another 'Best of' list of books to read, this time being Outside Magazine's The 10 Greatest Adventure Biographies. It's a wide-ranging collection featuring such diverse characters as Ernest Shackleton, Bruce Chatwin, Henry Morton Stanley and Marco Polo. And then there is Donald Crowhurst.

Donald Crowhurst was one of nine competitors who in June 1968 set out from Falmouth, England, on the Sunday Times Golden Globe, the world's first singlehanded nonstop round-the-world sailboat race. After battling with hurricanes and damaged equipment in a boat that many thought was unsuitable, the British sailor Robin Knox-Johnston was the only person to complete the race. His feat though was overshadowed by the bizarre journey of Crowhurst, who had secretly abandoned his attempt while reporting false positions in an attempt to claim the prize money without actually circling the globe, and then committed suicide. While he had designed marine navigation devices, it turned out that the man was in fact an inexperienced sailor who had bluffed his way into the event.

I always wanted to include the Crowhurst story in Those Who Dared but there was very little material about him in either the Guardian or the Observer. I eventually came across an excellent Malcolm Muggeridge review of The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst, by Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall. For an in depth essay about the sailor, I'd recommend Geoff Powter's We Cannot Fail: The Dark Psychology of Heroic Adventure.

Census of Marine Life

It has long been said that there are better maps of the moon than the Earth's ocean floor but the new Census of Marine Life reveals a little more about the 'twilight zone' where light barely penetrates. See a film about it here.

The census, a major international project surveying oceans, identified 17,650 species living deeper than 200 metres - the area where photosynthesis is impossible. Bizarre finds include an otopus with an elephant-like appearance, a tiny golden crustacean called a copepod (see left) and, more than 1.7 miles deep, a transparent sea cucumber filmed creeping forward on its many tentacles. Robot submersibles and sea-floor rovers, coring drills, dredges and trawling nets were used for the survey.

The news of this survey reminded me of reading about the excitement surrounding Dr William Beebe's deep sea discoveries in the 1930s - made with the help of the Bathysphere. This was a steel sphere equipped with look-out windows of fuzed quartz that made nearly twenty dives off Nonsuch Island, in the Bermudas, reaching a depth of 2,220 feet, the farthest that living man had then penetrated into the ocean.

Congo Free State

Travelling back to work after visiting the Hidden Histories exhibition, I spotted a letter in the Guardian drawing attention to the fact that "Today marks 100 years since the Archbishop of Canterbury led the great Congo demonstration that met on the steps of the Royal Albert Hall to call for justice in the Congo Free State."

The Congo Free State was a private colony set up by King Leopold II of Belgium in the Congo basin in the 1880s. For nearly 25 years the country was looted for its natural resources and became notorious for the way the locals were killed or mutilated in a brutal system of slave labour. Meanwhile, Leopold amassed a huge personal fortune.

Apart from the fact that the Royal Geographical Society is just around the corner from the Albert Hall, it is worth mentioning that the exhibition doesn't shy away from the ethics of exploration and Henry Morton Stanley's involvement with the Congo.

Following his success in 'finding' David Livingstone, in 1871, Stanley, the journalist, reinvented himself as an effective explorer discovering and charting central Africa's lakes and making a horrendous journey from east to west Africa. He was then employed by Leopold to help establish the new state and while he may not have been responsible for the horrendous crimes, Stanley's association with it was to leave his reputation severely tarnished.

As an aside, what went on in the country was fictionalised in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, centred on the evil trader Mr Kurtz, although there is debate as to whether or not this was modelled on Stanley.

One of those calling for justice in the Congo was the author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as can be seen in this Manchester Guardian report from November 1 1909.

Hidden Histories of Exploration

The Hidden Histories of Exploration exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) highlights the role of 'local' people in many of the great expeditions of the past. As Felix Driver, one of its researchers, has said "There's something about exploration which encourages an emphasis on the lone heroic explorer. We want to change the perspective and look at who the explorers depended on."

For example, naturalists such as Alfred Russel Wallace relied on indigenous collectors to gather materials in the field, the knowledge of native inhabitants was essential when making maps, while almost every kind of expedition relied on local manpower to cart equipment across deserts, up mountains etc. Even David Livingstone, perhaps the most famous of the 'lone travellers', had support while tramping around the jungles of Central Africa.

Exhibits include images of exploration since 1800 such as paintings by Thomas Baines (1820-1875), photographs, and documentary film footage from the 1922 Everest Expedition. The latter, in particular, provides a fascinating glimpse of Tibetan life, as well as shots of the climbers pretending to enjoy their yak butter tea. To make this film though, John Noel, needed eight Sherpas to assist him.

This idea of exploration being more than just the lone European explorer was something I tried to reflect in Those Who Dared. This was easier said than done with most reports usually concentrating on British adventurers. However, I did manage to find a few pieces such as a feature on Nain Singh, the famous pundit, from 1903. Pundits were native surveyors used by the British to map areas in the Himalaya, and particular Tibet, that were out of bounds to Europeans. Often disguised as traders, they would conceal sextants in specially designed secret pockets and hide their results in Tibetan Prayer wheels, which were supposed to contains strips of paper with prayers written on them.

The exhibition runs until December 10 2009. An interview with Felix Driver can be read here.

Tomaz Humar

The death of Tomaz Humar, one of the world's leading climbers, while making a solo attempt of the south face of Langtang Lirung, a 7,234m (23,700ft) mountain in northern Nepal, has been widely covered by the press. Obituaries can be read here and here. Climbing Lessons from the School of Tomaz Humar, a detailed profile of the Slovenian mountaineer that appeared in the June 2002 edition of Outside Magazine is also well worth a read.