Closer to the Edge: Climbing to the Ends of the Earth

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Leo's name is synonymous with adventure climbing; he has consistently pushed at the limits of this game and in the process has carved out a media profile which has seen him appear on Top Gear and be pitched as one of. Leo Houlding is one of the world’s best climbers; big walls, Everest, triple peaks in as many days, you name it, Leo’s probably climbed it! On the last morning as we said our goodbyes (snatched between violent fits of vomiting amidst my desperate hangover from the previous night's partying), Rolf, the wildest of their crew, with whom I had most bonded, took me to one side.

Honing his skills as he grew, Leo would travel abroad becoming the first Brit to free climb El Capitan in Yosemite National Park at 18 years of age, which cemented his reputation as a world class climber. We had a farewell party in the Stavanger climbers' pub Cementen on the picturesque docks of their oil-rich city, where I made a complete fool of myself due to my acute alcohol intolerance, blowing my shot of a dream end to the trip by going home with a blonde beauty and instead falling, or being thrown (I'm not sure which), into the harbour. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.

Excuse me, sir, I believe that was you up there and I am arresting you for a breach of the peace,' he said in his Mackem – not to be confused with Geordie – accent in the politest fashion the predicament could allow. He has since gone on to not only summit the world's toughest peaks, but to cross continents to explore the most extreme places our planet has to offer. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.

Read a snippet of Leo Houlding's first book, Closer to the Edge, and find out where you can hear more from Leo himself. He has since gone on to summit the world's toughest peaks and explore the most extreme places on our planet. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. I jumped in a taxi and arrived just in time for the reception party, full of old friends from the climbing world who were highly entertained by my brief incarceration. He has since gone on to summit the world’s toughest peaks and explore the most extreme places on our planet.

How does he assess risk and judge what level he’ll take himself to be successful, and how does he balance this with teaching his own children the lessons he has learnt in some of the world’s most dangerous and extreme places. Like a lot of people, all I knew about Leo before this was the Top Gear climb but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We all stayed with Trym in his tiny studio apartment, where we completely filled the entire floor space, bedded down in our sleeping bags. Closer to the Edge is the story of a remarkable climber and free spirit who has been at the top of his game for over thirty years, with still more mountains to explore. In a page-turning narrative, Leo describes his childhood inspirations to climb, his mentors who guided him, and the exhilaration of those teenage years when he broke into the public consciousness - such as his infamous race against Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gear.