Alan Hinkes has successfully climbed his 13th 8000m peak, with an ascent of Dhaulagiri. He topped out at around midday on 17 May with Pasang Gelu Sherpa, reports Alan's agent in Kathmandu, Bikrum Pandey.

Alan has only Kanchenjunga left to become the first Brit to climb all 14 8000m peaks. A 'career climber', Alan's quest is sometimes sneered at, but as Ed Douglas writes in the latest Climber magazine "...however good you are, however hard you try, no matter how much you manage to reduce the risks, you need fat gobs of luck to make it through, and that breeds humility. Life can whack you at high altitude, no matter how big your Lexus". Douglas was writing about Ed Viesturs, the American whose career is also built on 8000m bagging. Viesturs topped out on Everest this week for the 6th time, prior to a 'drive by' re-match with Annapurna. Unlike Hinkes, Viesturs may well drive a Lexus. With a far greater audience stateside, the commercial rewards of being a celebrity plodder whose image can easily be marketed to the mainstream are clearly much bigger. However, both are modest men who seem to have a great respect for and love of the mountains that they climb. There are worse ways of making a living.