Andy Kirkpatrick

Andy Kirkpatrick is a British mountaineer, author, motivational speaker and monologist who is best known as a big wall climber. He has climbed Yosemite's El Capitan more than thirty times, including five solo ascents and two one-day ascents, and has also climbed in Patagonia, Alaska, Antarctica and the Alps and crossed Greenland on skis. In 2014 he guided the television presenter Alex Jones up the Moonlight Buttress in Zion National Park in a Sport Relief effort that raised 1.9 million pounds. He has worked in film and television as a safety advisor and stunt rigger, and his documentary The Big Climb, about climbing El Capitan with his thirteen-year-old daughter Ella, won several awards. As a writer he has twice won the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature, for Psychovertical in 2008 and Cold Wars, and his work has appeared in several languages.