Troll Wall: The untold story of the British first ascent of Europe's tallest rock face - Hardcover

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Tony Howard grew up in the Chew Valley, at the northern tip of the Peak District. He started climbing in 1953 and became well known in climbing circles for his new routes and contributions to local guidebooks. He worked as an instructor in the early 1960s and qualified as a BMC guide in 1965, the year he and his friends famously made the first British ascent of Norway’s 1,000-metre-tall Troll Wall. Tony was a founding partner of Troll Climbing Equipment, designing many innovative products such as the world’s first commercial range of nuts, the first climbing ‘sit’ harnesses and the first sewn slings. He has guided and climbed all over the world, discovering new areas and making many first ascents. Tony is a regular contributor to outdoor magazines, and has authored several books, including Troll Wall, the untold story of the British first ascent of Europe’s tallest rock face. He has also written or contributed to guidebooks for the English Peak District, Norway, Oman, Morocco, Jordan and Palestine. He occasionally lives in the Chew Valley with his wife Di when they’re not off exploring yet another distant corner of the globe.

Born in Nottingham in 1941, Doug Scott began climbing in Derbyshire when he was thirteen and without any obvious plan in it was soon discovering the cliffs of Snowdonia, Scotland, the Alps and the Dolomites. He completed his first Alpine season at the age of eighteen. In 1965, aged twenty-three, he went on his first organised expedition, to the Tibesti Mountains of Chad. It was to be the first of many trips to the high mountains of the world. On 24 September 1975, he and his climbing partner Dougal Haston became the first Britons to reach the summit of Mount Everest, via the formidable South-West Face, and they became national heroes. In total, Scott made forty-two expeditions to the high mountains of Asia, reaching the summits of forty peaks. With the exception of his ascent of Everest, he made all his climbs in lightweight or alpine style and without the use of supplementary oxygen. Scott was made a CBE in 1994. He was a president of the Alpine Club, and in 1999 he received the Royal Geographical Society Patron’s Gold Medal. In 2011 he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Piolets d’Or, during the presentation of which his mountaineering style was described as ‘visionary’. In 1995 he founded Community Action Nepal (CAN), a UK-based registered charity whose aim is to help mountaineers to support the mountain people of Nepal. Up until his death in December 2020, Scott continued to climb, write and lecture, avidly supporting the work of CAN. He is the author of six books, including Up and About and The Ogre. Kangchenjunga is his final book.