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Given your experience, what are some of your favorite places you'd recommend for climbing or skiing? My opinion is massively skewed by what I know, which is a bit of the Himalayas, the Pamirs, the Alps, Antarctica and Greenland. For me, if you're into well-documented routes with easy access, reliable weather forecasts and excellent rock, then the Mont Blanc has everything going for it. e only downside is it's probably the most popular alpine climbing area in the world—but that's for good reason. You've got to be pretty canny to find quiet routes. On the other side, the east coast of Greenland is one of the most magical places on Earth. It's a coastline of 2,000 kilometers where mountains rise out of the sea. ere's oen stable weather, it's a beautiful landscape and there's amazing ski mountaineering and touring to be done there. ose are two safer places I'd recommend. What has been your most memorable experience of all your adventures? ere's been quite a few. Probably being in the wilderness of east Greenland. Out there skiing new lines that have never been climbed and skied before—miles from the nearest Inuit village in perfect weather. at's the high tide mark for me. I imagine your daily routine must vary quite oen. For you, what's an ideal day look like? Most ideal and most satisfying aren't quite the same. Starting on a route exceptionally early at 2 a.m., climbing quite a bit in the dark to be somewhere unusually beautiful when the sun rises. Oen by sunrise, I've taken 1,000 photos already. at's my sort of masochistic pleasure. For me, it's a satisfying day when everything goes right—the conditions are right and you get awesome pictures. When it comes to ideal, I'd prefer to get up at 7 a.m. and have a coffee, go ski touring somewhere where nobody has been before. But I quite like getting a good photo, so I oen prioritize that over my own comfort. You're currently working on a book entitled, "ALPENGLOW." Can you tell me a bit about that? I've climbed all the 4,000-meter peaks of the Alps (there's about 82) and I've become just the second person from Britain to do so. So about six years ago, I put together a list of the finest routes from discussions with other guides and such. Not ordinary routes, but routes with the most magical experiences in the Alps. I've climbed and photographed every route and I'm doing drawings of most of the mountains and writing up my accounts and weaving that with historic research. It's sort of like my magnum opus. It's now available for pre-order on my website bentibbetts.com. For the last 10 years or so I've also been working on a series of small drawings, I haven't done one bigger than a postcard for a very long time now. ey're like a commentary on adventures and image-making; they are also much more patient and reflective than my adventure photography. V U E N J . C O M 90

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