outdoors – Page 11 – John D Burns

The Downhill Mountaineering Club

November 24, 2013John D Burns 28

Part two of my Glencoul odyssey Sometimes you know in advance that things are not going to go your way. My plan is [...]

November 16, 2013John D Burns 5

It’s dark and I’m miles from anywhere in one of the Highland’s remotest glens, Glencoul, and the bothy in nowhere to be seen. [...]

November 1, 2013johndburns 10

I’ve been trying to ignore it for a while but now I’ve had to accept the something is happening “down below.” My inner [...]

October 12, 2013John D Burns 3

Mountains are big. I’ve noticed. In fact they are really big at the bottom and always very small at the top, that’s how [...]

October 4, 2013johndburns 12

Many years ago I was walking through a Canadian forest, heading for an ice climb, not too far from the town of Banff. [...]

August 23, 2013John D Burns 24

The next thing I know I’m sprawled on my back in the heather. A few moments ago, or so it seems, I was [...]

August 12, 2013johndburns 2

Something is coming towards me through the mist, I can see the figure of a man, easily nine feet high, striding in my [...]

There’s only one thought in my head now, “Keep pedalling!” I know they are after me. My legs screaming and my backside feels [...]

There is magic here. It’s in the way the wind whispers in the trees, it’s in the gnarled trunks of the old woodland, [...]

June 12, 2013John D Burns 2

Almost 90 years ago George Mallory, Britain’s leading climber, and Sandy Irvine, a young powerful oarsman, vanished into the mist close to the [...]