Read my feature on Alpine bivouacking in the latest Sidetracked magazine

Sidetracked Volume 11 is shipping now. This is the eighth issue of this magazine I have personally worked on, but the first I have contributed to as a writer and photographer as well as an editor.

Key themes in this issue are humanity, authenticity, and expanding our sphere of experience. There are spectacular features by Alienor Le Guovello, Sarah McNair-Landry, Sir Chris Bonington, Marco Barneveld, Ben Saunders, Mary McIntyre, and many more. Our Editor, Andrew Mazibrada, has contributed an excellent editorial on the nature of discovery.

John has made some tweaks to the design, layout and typography for this issue. I think the changes work extremely well, particularly the confident new cover design. Built on a spellbinding image by Ray Collins, in my opinion it’s the best Sidetracked cover to date.

Being a part of this team continues to be a privilege. It’s great to work with people who truly care about what they’re creating. This love and respect for the subject matter manifests itself in a rigorous editorial process, an obsessive focus on quality, and a dozen ‘no’s to every ‘yes’.

Bivouac

In amongst all this, there’s my little feature. It’s a ‘single moment’ – a double-page spread accompanied by a single image – and tells the story of a tense high-altitude bivouac in September 2017. It was my first unprotected bivouac above 3,000m and anxiety about circling thunderstorms came to define the experience.

Although this is the first story I’ve had published in Sidetracked, it isn’t the first I’ve pitched, which reinforces what I said above about no versus yes. The truth is that Sidetracked maintains very high standards. Despite my proven track record of delivering quality features for outdoor magazines, this is the first time I pitched something good enough to make the cut – and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

You can pick up your copy of Sidetracked Volume 11 at http://www.sidetracked.com/volume-11/.