SANDY ALLAN is a freelance British Mountain Guide favoured with a worldwide list of ascents, climbs and travels. Based from Newtonmore, Scotland, Sandy is a passionate mountaineer and Scottish winter climbing activist who feels it is imperative to maintain our natural wilderness areas in pristine condition and pass on to all, the unique sense of freedom, kinship and responsibility we experience in wide open spaces.

MALCOLM BASS lives with his partner Donna James on the edge of the North York Moors. Between expeditions he enjoys bouldering, sport and trad climbing, and driving up and down to Scotland in the dark. He works as a clinical psychologist in the NHS. He has climbed new alpine routes in Alaska, India and China, but is currently in the grip of an unhealthy obsession with Kilnsey.

MICHEL BATAILLON was artistic adviser of the Théâtre National Populaire from 1972 to 2004 and a translator of contemporary German playwrights. He now divides his time between the theatre, libraries and archives and his mountain home in the Oisans. His interest in mountain history led to his involvement in the retrieval and research into the celebrated Grépon ice-axe.

ANTONIO GÓMEZ BOHÓRQUEZ lives in Murcia, Spain. A librarian and documentalist (information scientist), he specialises in ascents in the north Peruvian ranges. He has written two books: La Cordillera Blanca de los Andes, selección de ascensiones, excursiones y escaladas and Cordillera Blanca, Escaladas, Parte Norte. He has climbed since 1967, with first ascents including Spanish Direct on the north face of Cima Grande di Lavaredo, Italy (1977), Direct on La Visera (1981) and Pilar del Cantábrico on Naranjo de Bulnes, Spain (1981), Canal Central on the south-west face of Alpamayo (1983), east face of Cerro Parón (La Esfinge, 5325m), Peru (1985) and the south-east face (1988).

PAUL BRAITHWAITE was AC president 2008-2010 and is the managing director of specialist contracting company Vertical Access Ltd. He started climbing in 1961 at the age of 14 with school friends on local Pennine outcrops. For more than 35 years he climbed extensively at a high standard in the UK, the Alps and greater ranges (winter/summer) and became one of Britain’s leading mountaineers of his generation. He was a member of many climbing expeditions to remote regions including Arctic Canada, Alaska, South America, Russia, Nepal and Tibet and has taken part in many first ascents including the south-west face of Everest in 1975.

KESTER BROWNis the managing editor/designer of publications for the New Zealand Alpine Club. He produces the club’s quarterly magazine The Climber and the annual NZ Alpine Journal. He is a rock climber and mountaineer of many years’ standing and lives at Taylors Mistake beach, NZ.

DEREK BUCKLE is a retired medicinal chemist now acting part-time as a consultant to the pharmaceutical industry. With plenty of free time, he spends much of this rock climbing, ski touring and mountaineering in various parts of the world. Despite climbing, his greatest challenges are finding time to accompany his wife on more traditional holidays and the filling of his passport with exotic and expensive visas.

ROB COLLISTER lives in North Wales and earns his living as a mountain guide. He continues to derive enormous pleasure as well as profit from all aspects of mountains and mountaineering.

HENRY DAY considers his real legacy to climbing to be the expeditions to the Himalaya he helped organise that gave many climbing friends great introductions to high mountains, such as on Shisha Pangma. Summiting Annapurna I (2nd ascent), Tirich Mir (4th), Trisul II and Indrasan were personal bonuses. Helping to carry the top camp on Everest (3rd British) was just as important.

PAT DEAVOLL has been a rock, ice and mountain climber for 35 years. These days she specialises in mountaineering in the greater ranges and has taken part in 10 expeditions to Asia in the past 10 years. In 2011 she will travel to Afghanistan to attempt the first ascent of the NW ridge of Koh-e-Baba-Tangi (6516m) in the Wakhan Corridor and is getting ridiculously excited about this. She (only just) manages to fund her expeditions by working for the New Zealand Alpine Club as events and activities co-ordinator... and scrounging grants.

DEREK FORDHAM, when not dreaming of the Arctic, practises as an architect and runs an Arctic photographic library. He is secretary of the Arctic Club and has led 21 expeditions to the Canadian Arctic, Greenland and Svalbard to ski, climb or share the life of the Inuit.

MICK FOWLER works for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and, by way of contrast, likes to inject as much memorable adventure and excitement into his climbing ventures. He has climbed extensively in the UK and has regularly led expeditions to the greater ranges for more than 25 years. He has written two books, Vertical Pleasure (1995) and On Thin Ice (2005). In December 2010 he was elected president of the Alpine Club.

TERRY GIFFORD was director of the annual International Festival of Mountaineering Literature for 21 years. Former chair of the Mountain Heritage Trust, he is the author of The Joy of Climbing (Whittles, 2004) and Al Otro Lado del Aguilar (Oversteps Books, 2011). Visiting professor at Bath Spa University’s Centre for Writing and Environment and profesor honorario at the University of Alicante, Spain, he acted as burro for the making of Gill Round’s walking guide, Costa Blanca (Rother 2007).

MARTIN GILLIE enjoys classic routes whilst 4000m peak bagging, and also exploring out-of-fashion corners of the Alps. Having to work as a university lecturer in Edinburgh to fund his addiction means that there is never sufficient time to do either to the extent he would like. He compensates by spending too much money on climbing guides, old and new.

PETER GILLMAN has been writing about mountaineering for 45 years. His biography of George Mallory, The Wildest Dream, co-authored with his wife Leni, won the Boardman Tasker prize in 2000. Other titles include Eiger Direct (written with Dougal Haston) and two editions of an Everest anthology. A devoted hill-walker, he completed the Munros in 1997.

STEPHEN GOODWIN renounced daily newspaper journalism on The Independent for a freelance existence in Cumbria, mixing writing and climbing. A precarious balance was maintained until 2003 when he was persuaded to take on the editorship of the Alpine Journal and ‘getting out’ became elusive again.

LINDSAY GRIFFIN lives in North Wales, from where he continues to report on the developments in world mountaineering. An enthusiastic mind still tries to coax a less than enthusiastic body up pleasant bits of rock and ice, both at home and abroad.

DAVID HAMILTON has been leading climbing, skiing and trekking trips in the greater ranges for 25 years. He has made multiple ascents of each of the ‘7 summits’. He has worked for seven seasons in Antarctica, leading climbers on Mt Vinson and skiers to the South Pole. In his spare time he enjoys small-scale travels in quieter mountain ranges closer to home.

STEWART HAWKINS was introduced to the mountains by Wilfrid Noyce when at school and has been a member of the Climbers’ Club for more than 50 years. He has climbed in Wales, Scotland, the Alps, Arabia and the Tien Shan and has explored other ranges in Asia and Africa. He lives in the southern French Alps where he is writing a biography of Noyce.

ANDY HOUSEMAN is from North Yorkshire but lives in Chamonix, France, where he is training to become a UIAGM guide. In spring 2011 he resumed his partnership with Nick Bullock for an attempt on the south pillar of Kyshar (6769m) in Nepal.

JOHN INNERDALE is an architect, landscape painter and beekeeper based in the Lake District. A lifetime of walking and climbing in the UK, Alps, Norway, Pyrenees, Himalaya and Patagonia has helped him understand and interpret mountain architecture. He is a trustee of the Mountain Heritage Trust.

DICK ISHERWOOD has been a member of the Alpine Club since 1970. His climbing record includes various buildings in Cambridge, lots of old-fashioned routes on Cloggy, a number of obscure Himalayan peaks, and a new route on the Piz Badile (in 1968). He now follows Tilman’s dictum about old men on high mountains and limits his efforts to summits just a little under 20,000 feet.

JEFFREY MATHES McCARTHY is chair of Environmental Studies and associate professor of English at Westminster College in Utah. He is an active climber with first ascents in Alaska and the Pacific North-west. His writing is published in both academic and climbing journals. He edited Contact: mountain climbing and environmental thinking (2008).

HARISH KAPADIA has climbed in the Himalaya since 1960, with ascents up to 6800m. He recently retired as honorary editor of both the Himalayan Journal. In 1993 he was awarded the IMF’s Gold Medal and in 1996 he was made an honorary member of the Alpine Club. He has written several books including High Himalaya Unknown Valleys, Spiti: Adventures in the Trans-Himalaya and, most recently, Siachen Glacier: The Battle of Roses . In 2003 he was awarded the Patron’s Gold Medal by the Royal Geographical Society.

PAUL KNOTT is a lecturer in business strategy at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. He previously lived in the UK. He enjoys exploratory climbing in remote mountains, and since 1990 has undertaken 14 expeditions to Russia, Central Asia, Alaska and the Yukon. He has also climbed new routes in the Southern Alps and on desert rock in Oman and Morocco.

PAT LITTLEJOHN is known for a ‘clean climbing’ ethic and adherence to the lightweight, alpine-style approach. His worldwide portfolio of first ascents includes the NE Pillar of Taweche (Nepal), Raven’s Pyramid (Karakoram), Poi N Face (Kenya) and Kjerag N Buttress (Norway). He succeeded Peter Boardman as director of the International School of Mountaineering in 1983. Pat enjoys passing on the skills acquired over four decades of alpine climbing and is keen to ensure that climbing’s unique ‘spirit of adventure’ is kept alive, both on the rock and in the mountains.

JERRY LOVATT is the Alpine Club’s honorary librarian, a former AC vice-president and a book collector with a particular interest in early Alpine history. His mountaineering activities continue, albeit at a rather more sedate pace than his book collecting, this year taking him with other AC members to a largely untouched range in north-west China.

ANDRÉ MOULIN is a French entrepreneur, former Lloyd’s member – and member of the AC since 1988. A major collector of mountaineering books and Mont Blanc prints, he enjoys hiking in the Alps and spending time in a former military lookout post isolated on a mountain top in the southern Alps that he has turned in a private hut.

BERNARD NEWMAN started climbing the day England won the World Cup, so you’d think he’d be better at it by now. He joined the Leeds University Union Climbing Club in 1968 when Mike Mortimer was president and was closely associated with that exceptional group of rock climbers and super-alpinists which included Syrett, MacIntyre, Baxter-Jones, Porter and Hall, without any of their talent rubbing off. One-time geologist, editor of Mountain and Climber, Bernard is now a ‘freelance’ writer, editor and photographer.

BRUCE NORMAND is from Scotland but lives in China, where he works as professor of physics at Renmin University (People’s University) in Beijing. Author of more than 20 first ascents and new routes on 6000m peaks in the Trans-Himalaya, he has also climbed K2.

SIMON RICHARDSON is a petroleum engineer based in Aberdeen. Experience gained in the Alps, Andes, Patagonia, Canada, the Himalaya, Alaska and the Yukon is put to good use most winter weekends whilst exploring and climbing in the Scottish Highlands.

GEORGE RODWAY is a physiologist, mountaineer and an expert on mountain medicine. An assistant professor at the University of Utah, he has written extensively on the history of high-altitude physiology and is the editor of George Ingle Finch’s The Struggle for Everest (2008).

C A RUSSELL, who formerly worked with a City bank, devotes much of his time to mountaineering and related activities. He has climbed in many regions of the Alps, in the Pyrenees, East Africa, North America and the Himalaya.

BILL RUTHVEN is an honorary member of the Alpine Club. Before being confined to a wheelchair he had built up more than half a century of mountaineering experience, which is invaluable to him in his work as hon secretary of the Mount Everest Foundation. He is always happy to talk to and advise individuals planning an expedition.

MARCELO SCANU is an Argentine climber, born in 1970, who lives in Buenos Aires. He specialises in ascending virgin mountains and volcanoes in the Central Andes. His articles and photographs about alpinism, trekking, and mountain history, archaeology and ecology appear in prominent magazines in Europe and America. When not climbing, he works for a workers’ union.

DOUG SCOTT was born in Lossiemouth and grew up in Peninsular Malaysia. He started climbing in the Alps in 1978 and has climbed in the Andes, Antarctica, Papua, Rockies, Caucasus, India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan. Formerly a London-based architect, he is now a UIAGM guide based in Chamonix. When not working he likes to relax on steep bits of rock and ice. His first book, Elusive Summits, won the Boardman Tasker prize. In 2007 he received an honorary MA from the University of Stirling for services to Scottish mountaineering and between 2004 and 2008 has successfully guided Everest four times.

MARCELO SCANU is an Argentine climber, born in 1970, who lives in Buenos Aires. He specialises in ascending virgin mountains and volcanoes in the Central Andes. His articles and photographs about alpinism, trekking, and mountain history, archaeology and ecology appear in prominent magazines in Europe and America. When not climbing, he works for a workers’ union.

DOUG SCOTT has made almost 40 expeditions to the high mountains of Asia. He has reached the summit of 30 peaks, of which half have been first ascents, and all were climbed by new routes or for the first time in lightweight style. Apart from his climb up the SW face of Everest with Dougal Haston in 1975, he has made all his climbs in alpine style without the use of supplementary oxygen. He is a former president of the Alpine Club.

BOB SHEPTON was fortunate enough to find the cliffs of Lulworth and Portland unclimbed in the 1960s and 70s and set about steadily developing them. In latter years he has led Tilman-type expeditions to the west coast of Greenland and Arctic Canada, sailing and climbing new routes from his boat, culminating in the ‘Big Walls’ expedition that was awarded a Piolet d’Or in 2011.

JOHN TOWN is a retired university administrator. He has climbed in the Alps, Caucasus, Altai, Andes, Turkey and Kamchatka, and explored little-known mountain areas of Mongolia, Yunnan and Tibet. He is old enough to remember the days without satellite photos and GPS.

PHIL WICKENS studied biology at Imperial College in London. After completing his PhD in plant pathology he worked for two winters and three summers as a field guide for the British Antarctic Survey, and currently works as a freelance guide, lecturer and photographer in the polar regions. He has led numerous climbing and skiing expeditions to remote areas, including the Alpine Club’s expeditions to the Pamirs and Antarctica.

JEREMY WINDSOR is an anaesthetist and researcher at the Institute of Human Health and Performance, based at University College London. Despite limited ability, he has climbed widely throughout the UK and the greater ranges. As an expedition doctor he has undertaken trips to East Africa, South America, Greenland and the Himalaya.

DAVE WYNNE-JONES used to teach before he learnt his lesson. He has spent over 30 years exploring the hills and crags of Britain and climbed all the Alpine 4000m peaks. By the 1990s annual alpine seasons had given way to explorative climbing further afield, including Jordan, Morocco, Russia and Ecuador, though ski mountaineering took him back to the Alps in winter. Expedition destinations have included Pakistan, Peru, Alaska, the Yukon, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, India and China with a respectable tally of first ascents.