Climbing · Worth knowing

Two decades later, the legends reconvene.

Tim Emmett and Neil Gresham are revisiting Preposterous Tales at Kendal Mountain Festival, a retrospective on the climbing adventures and mishaps they chronicled together [Source: Kendal Mountain]. The original series became legendary for capturing climbing's irreverent side—the stories and near-disasters that don't make it into highlight reels. Watching climbers of that stature reflect on their own history offers something rare: honesty about how you actually climb versus the myth.

Nostalgia with substance beats nostalgia alone.

One guide, five Everest summits, decades of climbing architecture.

New Zealand's Guy Cotter has built Adventure Consultants into one of the Himalayas' largest expedition operators, but his résumé reads like a climber's fever dream: Everest summited five times, all Seven Summits completed, seven 8,000-meter peaks ticked, and a back-to-back Everest-Lhotse push in 24 hours [Source: Adventure Consultants]. Beyond the peaks, Cotter works as a high-altitude cameraman and safety lead on major film productions, including Apple's recent Tenzing biopic. His IFMGA certification and decades guiding mean he's shaped how modern expeditions run—not just climbed them.

Mastery at scale is the rarer achievement than any single summit.