Five Heroes Of Mountaineering

Adventure holidays have become increasingly popular in recent years, especially where mountain trekking is concerned � routes such as the Inca Trail, Annapurna Circuit and Everest Base Camp have become some of the �do before you die� holiday experiences for the more adventurous traveller. But while plenty of people enjoy going on trekking holidays to great mountain ranges, climbing the most difficult peaks is a far greater challenge. There are countless great mountaineers who have risked life and limb to conquer the highest, toughest and most dangerous mountains in the world, but there are a few that stand out from the crowd as true mountaineering heroes...

George Mallory

One of the heroes of the climbing world, and perhaps the most famous mountaineer of all, Englishman George Mallory became famous for a series of unsuccessful (and ultimately tragic) attempts to summit Mount Everest (8848m) in the 1920 s. In what became a burning obsession, Mallory led three attempts on the summit. On the third attempt, on the 8th June 1924 he, and his climbing partner Andrew Irvine, disappeared somewhere on the slopes of Everest. Fierce debate has raged ever since as to whether or not Mallory and Irvine made it to the summit before they died. His famous quote (�Because it is there�, in response to a journalist asking why he wished to climb Everest) has inspired countless mountain lovers on their trekking holidays and climbing expeditions ever since.

Maurice Herzog

In 1950, French mountaineer Maurice Herzog made history by being the first person to successfully summit a peak over eight thousand metres above sea level � Annapurna I (8091m). He lost his gloves on the way up, and the terrible weather on the descent almost claimed the life of Herzog and his fellow climbers. Frostbite cost him most of his fingers and toes, but he managed to make it down alive. His book of the experience, Annapurna, became a massive best seller and trekking holidays in and around the Annapurna massif are hugely popular today but only a few elite climbers have repeated Herzog s feat and made it to the top of Annapurna I.

Sir Edmund Hillary

While a trekking holiday to Everest Base Camp is within the capabilities of most fit hikers, the summit of the world s highest mountain eluded mountaineers for decades. New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary will forever be famous, alongside his climbing partner Sherpa Tenzing, for being one of the first men to finally make it to the top of the mountain in 1953.

Reinhold Messner

Reinhold Messner s biography reads like a list of mountaineering records and world firsts. Born in Italy in 1944, he was one of the first two people to make a successful ascent of Mount Everest without bottled oxygen, the first person to make a solo ascent of Everest (also without oxygen), the first climber to successfully summit all fourteen eight thousanders, and so on. In terms of raw achievement, Messner can be considered to be the world s greatest mountaineer, living or dead.

Joe Simpson

Joe Simpson has become a modern day mountaineering hero due to a near death experience in 1985 in the Peruvian Andes. While attempting to climb the west face of Siula Grande (6344m), a route that had never been successfully attempted, he first broke his leg, then fell down a crevasse after his partner was forced to cut the rope connecting them. Astonishingly, despite suffering from hypothermia, dehydration and the severe pain of his broken leg, after three and a half days he managed to crawl back to their base camp to be rescued. His book of the experience, Touching the Void, has become one of the contemporary classics of mountaineering literature, and was recently made into an award winning documentary.