Speakers from the Edge

a really cracking lecture in a pleasantly laconic style that gets right to the heart of what modern exploratory mountaineering is all about. Such was the demand to hear him speak that we needed to bring him back again and again. He has now spoken for us on no less than 8 occasions and his new lectures are justifiably just as popular as his original talk.'

- Robin Ashcroft National Mountaineering Exhibition, Rheged

About Simon

Born in 1963, Simon grew up in the village of Croft in Leicestershire and spent his youth grubbing around on the tiny local outcrops, loose quarries and railway viaducts until escaping to college in Sheffield at 18 to study Biochemistry. However, four years earlier at the age of 14, Simon had already been hooked on climbing after a school trip to Coniston in the Lake District and ultimately he abandoned a conventional lifestyle to pursue his mountaineering ambitions.

25 years later, Simon is one of the most famous and accomplished exploratory mountaineers of his time. After the harrowing events of his and Joe Simpson’s first ascent of the West Face of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in 1985 during which Simon was forced to take the decision to cut Joe’s rope after he had fallen in a crevasse (as recounted in the bestselling book and BAFTA award-winning film ‘Touching the Void’) Simon carried on to climb in some of the most remote and rarely explored mountain ranges of the world. He has made eleven visits to the Pakistani Karakoram, climbing numerous peaks including first ascents of Leyla Peak (6300m) and Nemeka (6400m) in Hushe. He succeeded with a team making the first British ascents of Khan Tengri (6995m) in Kazakhstan and for a time concentrated on big wall climbing in Patagonia and Baffin Island – his most notable achievement a new route on the Central Tower of Paine in Chile. Simon has made four sailing and mountaineering trips to Chilean Tierra del Fuego resulting in the first ascents of Monte Ada (2100m) and Monte Iorana (2300m). In September 2004 Simon returned to Pakistan and made the first ascent of the South West Face of Hispar Sar (6400m), and in May 2005 climbed a new route on the West Face of Mount Alverstone (4439m) the remote Wrangell-St Elias range of mountains on the Alaskan–Yukon border.

As well as his mountaineering achievements, Simon also runs an expedition company and is a successful speaker and writer. His first book 'Against the Wall' was runner up in The Boardman Tasker Award for mountain literature in 1997 and his second book ‘The Flame of Adventure’ was short-listed for a prize in the prestigious Banff Mountain Book Festival in 2001.

Simon currently lives near Penrith in the Lake District and is married with 2 young children.