The Ascent of Manaslu: Climbing the world's eighth highest mountain (Footsteps on the Mountain travel diaries Book 15)

The mountain gods were very protective of Manaslu, a huge two-pronged peak in the Nepal Himalaya, and the eighth highest mountain in the world. When a Japanese team tried to climb it in the 1950s, the gods sent an avalanche in their wake which destroyed a nearby monastery and set the local population against them. They returned the following year, but were met with sticks and stones and made to undergo what in schoolboy parlance is known as a "de-bagging".



While Mark Horrell had never returned trouserless from an expedition and intended to keep that record, he was determined to give the mountain a go, and set out to climb it with regular climbing partners Mark and Ian in Autumn 2011.



A more luckless trio of wannabe mountaineers would be hard to find. Between them they had made no fewer than eight attempts to climb an 8000 metre peak without success, and the author was on his fourth attempt alone. Would it be any different this time? And perhaps less importantly, would they keep their trousers? This is the story of their climb as part of a commercial expedition team.



This ebook contains many of the author's photographs from the expedition.