Everest

Stephen Venables is one of the best-known mountaineers of his generation. In 1988 he became the first Briton to climb Everest without supplementary oxygen as part of a team pioneering a new route up the Kangshung Face - the biggest wall on the world's highest peak. His books include Everest: Alone at the Summit and A Slender Thread: Escaping Disaster in the Himalayas, which describes how, during the descent from the Panch Chuli V in northern India, Venables plunged 300 feet (91m) down the mountainside and was stranded at 19,000 feet (5791m).