Dermot Somers

Dermot Somers is an Irish mountaineer, explorer, writer and broadcaster, born in 1947 in Tremane, County Roscommon. He studied at University College Dublin, taught for a time and then turned full time to writing, broadcasting and travel. He began climbing in 1974, at the age of 27, and became one of the leading rock climbers in Ireland during the 1970s, establishing new routes at Ailladie, Fair Head, Muckross Head and Tormore. In 1983 he became the first Irishman to climb the six great north faces of the Alps, and he took part in Irish expeditions to Changtse in 1987, Manaslu in 1991 and Everest in 1993. His story collection At the Rising of the Moon won the 1994 Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature, and he has written and presented many radio and television programmes on mountains, exploration and the Irish landscape for RTÉ and TG4.