Houlding Makes The Sundays

If you want to see Leo Houlding's Asgard Project then you'll have to wait for the Kendal Mountain Festival when Alastair Lee's film of the expedition premieres, but you can read about it right now thanks to Ed Douglas and the Mail On Sunday.

Last Sunday's paper carried a detailed and highly readable account of the sky diving / climbing trip to Baffin Island by Houlding, one of Britain's best climbers. And it's dramatic stuff - at one point Houlding falls around 50 feet when a sky hook slips off a rock flake sending him plummeting down the sheer face of Mount Asgard:

'The skyhook blew. It pinged off the granite and Houlding fell instantly, accelerating down the wall. His hands gripping the nylon tape clipped to the hook were dragged down the rock as he plunged, lacerating his skin. As he whipped past the bolt, his climbing partner belayed the rope, ensuring he eventually stopped - 50ft below where he'd been a second before, his heart thumping against his ribs.'

The article's based on a one-to-one interview with Houlding just after his return from the Arctic and covers not just his recent project, but the ascent of Everest with Conrad Anker when the pair free climbed the Second Step to show that it would have been possible for Mallory and Irvine to climb the mountain, though he describes the ascent as 'extreme trekking, really'.

He also details the reasoning behind the Asgard Project and wanting to make a film that was 'the opposite of the Bear Grylls thing - there's no support, no nonsense'. Explains why the team switched objectives to an even harder face than was originally planned and describes the route as 'ten times harder than Everest'.

It's also worth a browse to take in a very fine collection of beards and extreme stubble in the group photo.

Well worth reading. You can find the full and very long articles at www.mailonsunday.co.uk