Banff Mountain Book Competition Category Finalists Announced

The Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival have released the list of category finalists for the 2024 Mountain Book Competition. Among the shortlisted titles are three books by Alpine Club members.

Graham Zimmerman's A Fine Line is shortlisted for the Jon Whyte Award for non-fiction mountain literature, while Heather Dawe's Dreams of Lost Buttresses and Ben Tibbetts' The 4000m Peaks of the Alps, Volume 1: West  have been nominated in the Mountain Fiction & Poetry and Guidebook categories, respectively. 

Reviews of A Fine Line and Dreams of Lost Buttresses feature in this year's Alpine Journal.

2024 Boardman Tasker Award Shortlist Announced

The judges of the 2024 Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature have announced a shortlist of six books. Among the nominees is AC member Graham Zimmerman for his book A Fine Line.

The other shortlisted titles are Alpine Rising by Bernadette McDonald, Behind Everest by Kate Nicholson, Mountains of Fire by Clive Oppenheimer, Headstrap by Nandini Purandare and Deepa Balsavar and Royal Robbins: The American Climber by David Smart. Both McDonald and Smart are previous winners of the Boardman Tasker for their biographies of Voytek Kurtyka and Emilio Comici respectively.

The winner will be announced at a special event at this year's Kendal Mountain Festival. 

New BMC Video Series Explores the Ecology of Climbing Venues

The British Mountaineering Council (BMC) have teamed up with AC member Nathan Chrismas and filmmaker Jimmy Hyland to produce a series of videos exploring the ecology and geology of various UK climbing areas. The Landscape Project visits popular crags and shows how, as climbers, we move among a wealth of natural history, from the rocks themselves to the numerous species that make them their homes.

You can view all of the videos in the series via the BMC's YouTube Playlist.

Harish Kapadia to Receive 2024 Ulsan Ulju Mountain Culture Award

AC member and former editor of the Himalayan Journal Harish Kapadia is set to be honoured at the 2024 Ulsan Ulju Mountain Film Festival. Kapadia will receive the presigious Mountain Culture Award in recognition of his contributions to Himalayan exploration and peace campaigning.

Announcing their decision, the UMCA committee said:

"Harish Kapadia(79) is an “explorer for peace” who has made significant contributions to the accumulation, analysis, and dissemination of the exploratory knowledge in the Himalayas, as well as to peace efforts in mountain conflict zones."

Kapadia joins an impressive list of previous recipients which includes Reinhold Messner, Sir Chris Bonington, Catherine Destivelle and Stephen Venables.

On behalf of the Alpine Club, we would like to congratulate Harish on this well-deserved mark of recognition.