Victor is a world-renowned British mountaineer and became a mountain guide in 1996 after a career as an architect in London. He relocated to Chamonix, France in 2003.
He has climbed extensively throughout Europe, the Himalayas and Karakoram achieving many first ascents including the North Pillar of Spantik. He recently calculated that he’s spent five years of his life under canvas!
Victor summitted Mount Everest for his first of six times in 2004 and with back to back summits on Aconcagua in 2013, he completed his Seven Summits bid.
His ascents list is predominantly on climbs of a remote and desperately hard nature, and Victor is still bubbling over with enthusiasm for the peaks and peoples of the Himalayas after 20 years of climbing.
Other books by the author
No Place to Fall is Victor Saunder’s follow up to his Boardman Tasker Prize winning debut book Elusive Summits. Covering three expeditions to familiar and unfamiliar ranges in Nepal, the Karakoram and the Kumaon, each shares the exhilaration of attempting new alpine-style routes on terrifyingly committing mountains.
In 1989 Victor Saunders and Steve Sustad completed a difficult route on the West Face of Makalu II, only to be brought to a storm-bound halt above 7000 metres while descending. Without food or bivouac gear, they endured a tortuous descent after a night in the open.
Two years later the pair were with a small team in the Hunza valley, exploring elusive access to a giant hidden pillar on the unvisited South East Face of Ultar, one of the highest and most shapely of the world’s unclimbed peaks. Climbing at night to avoid being caught out by the torture of sun on ice, they were a few pitches from the summit ridge before equipment failure committed them to a dire descent.
At a time when the greatest mountains in the greatest ranges had been climbed by numerous routes, collected like stamps and written about extensively, Victor Saunders and his friends relished the exploration of the slightly lower, slightly humbler, but often more aesthetically satisfying and no less testing summits in the 6000- and 7000-metre range. With thousands of unclimbed peaks in the Karakorum and Himalaya to choose from, these were ripe fruit for the committed mountaineers of the day.
In his Boardman-Tasker-winning Elusive Summits, Victor Saunders describes four expeditions to the Karakoram, to Uzum Brakk, Bojohaghur Duanasir, Rimo and the stunning Spantik. Battling crevasses and violent weather, injured climbers and dropped rucksacks, Saunders and his friends make a string of exciting and difficult ascents.
Follow my journey through the strangest winter of all.
