What's New on Mountaindays.net?

Image courtesy of danielwoods.us

Cheaptents.com have recently published an interview with Daniel Woods, one of North Faces sponsored climbers. 

Born in 1989, Daniel has had a resounding climbing career for someone so young.  Daniel has put his stamp on bouldering from a very young age - entering his first competition when he was just 8 years old!  Since then he has continued to test the capabilities of a climber on some of the toughest climbs around.  He takes great pride in testing his climbing abilities across both bouldering and sport climbing of which he his topping the scale of difficulty ratings in both sports

The young John Harlin III came of age possessed with the very same passion for risk that drove his father to his death on the North Face of the Eiger. But he had also promised his mother, a beautiful and brilliant young widow, that he would not be an Alpine climber. Harlin moved from Europe to America, and, with an insatiable sense of wanderlust, he revelled in downhill skiing and rock-climbing. For years he successfully denied the siren call of the mountain that killed his father. But in 2005, he could resist no longer. And so it was, that with his nine-year-old daughter, Siena – his very age at the time of his father’s death – and with an IMAX Theatre filmmaking crew watching, John Harlin III set off towards the Eiger…

In the first part of our mountain navigation series, we start by reviewing the different map sources available to UK users including online, handheld, paper and computer based. 

We then go onto discuss the different scales used on the more popular maps used by UK hill walkers before reviewing the symbols used.

We’re starting a series of articles about the art of mountain navigation written by Giles Thurston, a qualified International Mountain Leader. 

Through this series we will provide an introduction to navigating in a mountain environment including the use of the map, estimating distance travelled, using a compass and GPS devices

Since the launch of the new look site earlier this month, we have been burning the midnight oil trying to make Mountaindays even better! 

You can now add comments to articles, use google search to find what you’re looking for and submit your own articles for publication.  Over the coming months we are planning a series of articles about the fundamentals of navigation and we have more mountain bike specific reviews and articles in the pipeline.

Following the release of his latest book Thin White Line, we caught up with Andy Cave for a quick chat.

Thin White Line is the sequel to Learning to Breath, Andy Cave’s bestselling debut book which was joint winner of the Boardman Tasker Prize in 2005 and winner of the Adventure Travel Award at the Banff International Festival. 

Well after months of talking about it, we have finally got around to doing the re-design of Mountaindays.net.  We hope you like it?  Its all change on both the front end, with a different look…

Thin White Line is the sequel to Learning to Breath, Andy Cave’s bestselling debut book which was joint winner of the Boardman Tasker Prize in 2005 and winner of the Adventure Travel Award at the Banff International Festival. 

During this book we travel from the Peak District to the Himalayas, from Norway to Patagonia and from the European Alps to Alaska, in the company of many of today’s leading mountaineers and climbers.  Andy reveals the personal challenges he had to overcome to return to extreme climbing, following the death of his climbing partner Brendan. 

This guidebook has graced the bookshelves of many climbing and book stores for over 30 years and in this the fifth edition, Kev Reynolds has re-written many sections of the book to bring it up to date with all the developments in the area.  Focusing on the Central or High Pyrenees from Lescun in the west to Ax-les Thermes in the east, this guidebook gives the reader an overview of the area through a combination of single and multi day trips, plus the odd easy rock climb thrown in for good measure.

Kev Reynolds is a well known guidebook author with a wealth of trekking experience from around the globe.  The credits on the opening page of the book list nearly 30 other guidebooks written by him and published through Cicerone and with this track history you know that you are going to be dealing with an authoritative guidebook. 

Here’s one of ours, made up of series of photographs taken during our trip to the Alps in June 2004. You can see more of the photos in the gallery else where on the site.

Thanks also goes to Tom Parkin for donating some of his shots from the trip.