More people have landed on the moon than on all 14 summits which are
Posted in General on 22. Sep, 2010
More people have landed on the moon than on all 14 summits, which are ranged across Pakistan and Nepal. He escaped with a broken arm.Yet Hinkes is now back on the mountain: little more than 1,000 metres from the summit if the most optimistic estimates of his progress are correct and, in the words of the dedicated website everestnews , “just a step away from mountaineering history”.He is trying to become the first Briton (and only the 12th person in all) to climb all 14 of the world’s 8,000-metre-plus peaks – “the eight-thousanders” as they are known to the mountaineering community. In May 2000, he nearly joined the legion of 40 souls lost to the mountain when a snow bridge collapsed beneath him and he plunged into a crevasse. Mount Kangchenjunga is the Himalayan peak where any such weather system strikes first, dumping the snow and creating the avalanche conditions that have made the place a graveyard for around one in five of the 250 climbers who have risked its huge faces and unpredictable crevasses over the past 50 years.
Alan Hinkes, a 50-year-old former schoolteacher from North Yorkshire, knows the perils of ascending the peak at this time of year.
The mountain they call “Kangch” is not a place to be when the monsoons begin their spectacular progress out of the Bay of Bengal – which will be any time now. This is how it should look,” she says, gazing out to the sunny fields and dry-stone walls.For details of the Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases, visit .uk. “This land has been farmed for generations, and there are ancient rights of way across it. This place really abuses all systems – you get abuse of the law, abuse of democracy, abuse of the planning process – and it’s not accountable.”And here the Americans are in firm control, and they only pass a small amount of intelligence on to us So it doesn’t make sense. And all this is such out-of-date thinking, isn’t it? We’re in such a mess. We’ve got to think of different ways of doing things, instead of blowing people’s brains out It’s tragic.. and look at the place. It’s just so offensive.”She turns her back on the base and its guns, satellite dishes and razor wire to look out over the countryside towards Nidderdale.
“I can see that there has to be some intelligence-gathering, of course, because there are some really nasty people around But I do think that it has to be accountable to someone There have to be checks and balances. But there’s never a problem finding money for these places.”She accepts that, in a heavily armed world, some surveillance may be necessary. My whole working life has been in the NHS; I’m a passionate believer in it And we’re told there aren’t the resources for it. “It’s such a scar in this beautiful countryside – and we’ve allowed it to happen, allowed this visiting force to take control and actually put all our security at risk And the resources expended on it… But I think the background to this is that we’re the eyes and ears on the ground here, and the Americans on the base are saying, ‘We don’t want them here; they’re causing too much trouble.’”But we have every right to be here. This is our country, and what we’ve done is to challenge them.” She says the base has “militarised the Dales”, with its razor wire and machine guns. “In nearly five years at Menwith, ours has always been a peaceful demonstration,” she insists “I don’t jump around and scream at people And we’d never use bad language.