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Alex Roddie

Happiest on a mountain. Writer, story-wrangler, digital and film photographer. Editor of Sidetracked magazine. Machine breaker.

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Why I don’t use blue ink any more

In 2007, I made the first of several visits to the Alpine Club archives in London. I was conducting research for the novel that would eventually become The Only Genuine Jones, and those early archive trips were vital in establishing a baseline of knowledge for future research. I had started

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What I’ve been reading this week, 26 October 2018

Winter arrives in the mountains, the reviewer’s curse, lost images from Everest, and not being afraid to break things… Outdoors and photography Don’t slip up this winter – time to winterise your rucksack – with snow arriving in the Scottish Highlands as I write this, Heather Morning from Mountaineering Scotland

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What I’ve been reading this week, 19 October 2018

Plenty of links for you this week: what National Parks are for, the Skye Trail, camping in the Alps, weariness at the pace of technological change, broken MacBook keyboards, and more… Books I am currently reading Polar Eskimo by Alex Hibbert, and Ilium by Dan Simmons (had this on the

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For what are mountains waiting?

For what are mountains waiting? All night they are expectant : heavy hoods of hills rounding against the stars seem opening about invisible eyes, that watch within the darkness under brows of darker precipice… At night we feel the mountains are hearkening, and all but hearing. —From April and Rain by

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Trying to take a stand against information overload

Have you wondered why I began my regular ‘what I’ve been reading this week’ slot on my blog? Have you wondered why I rarely retweet and share other people’s stuff on Twitter these days? It’s because the bottomless content feeds we’ve allowed to take up so

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What I’ve been reading this week, 12 October 2018

Scrambling on Skye, hill tracks, mental health… and tech giants throwing their weight around (again). Outdoors Banished to Room 101: the Inaccessible Pinnacle – Mark Horrell climbs the Inn Pinn, and tells the story in typically amusing fashion. (I still haven’t hit three figures in my round of the Munros,

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The Alder Trail

Alex Roddie answers the call of Ben Alder’s wildness in this ambitious long-distance trail between Fort William and Aviemore. This feature was first published in Trail magazine, November 2016.  The Alder Trail is a highly challenging route, with considerable off-trail sections crossing Munros, suitable only for experienced backpackers in

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Instagram is getting worse

My relationship with social media is a complex one – not quite love/hate, perhaps tolerate/loathe – and I’ve spent a great deal of time over the last few years thinking about and studying the subtle but insidious costs of participating in these platforms.1 Yes, I tweet, and I

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What I’ve been reading this week, 5 October 2018

Tentflix, challenges, ditching podcasts, and more. Outdoors Tentflix: why I vlog and my favourite outdoors channels – this is a great list of UK-oriented outdoor-themed YouTube channels (thanks for listing me too, Robin!). I rarely have time to watch much on YouTube, and go through multi-month spells without creating any videos

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Published: ‘The Hidden Tracks – Wanderlust off the Beaten Path’

The Hidden Tracks by Cam Honan (gestalten) has now been published. I received my copy the other day. Why am I telling you this? Because it contains several of my images, captured in 2016 on my section hike of the Haute Route Pyrenees. The book is visually sumptuous, filled with