An Evening with Doug Scott

The Hard Road to Everest

Legendary mountaineer Doug Scott give a fascinating insight into how a lad born in Nottingham during the darkest days of WWII got into climbing on the Black Rocks in Derbyshire - aided with nothing but his mother's clothes line, and how this led him to Everest in 1975.

At dusk on 24 September, Doug and Dougal Haston became the first Britons to reach the summit of Everest as lead climbers on Chris Bonington's epic expedition to the mountain's south-west face. As darkness fell they scraped a small cave in the snow 100 metres below the summit and survived the highest bivouac ever – without bottled oxygen, sleeping bags and, as it turned out, frostbite. For Doug Scott, it was the fulfilment of a fortune-teller's prophesy given to his mother: that her eldest son would be in danger in a high place with the whole world watching.

Scott and Haston returned home national heroes with their image splashed across the front pages. Scott went on to become one of Britain's greatest ever mountaineers, pioneering new climbs in the remotest corners of the globe. His career spans the golden age of British climbing from the 1960s boom in outdoor adventure, to the new wave of lightweight alpinism throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

Proceeds from the evening will support the work of Community Action Nepal www.canepal.org.uk and include a sale of Nepalese goods and an auction of signed framed mountaineering prints. Doug will update the audience about the post-earthquake reconstruction of CAN's projects. He will also be signing copies of his posters and books.