Seasons - or in Bob Dylan’s words, “The Times” - are changing quickly now. Or at least, I feel it. After a long, hot, dry summer in Europe where river levels fell to record lows, green grass became an illusion - unless you played golf, and glaciers in Switzerland were covered by white tarpaulins to stem them from melting into thin air, I’m now writing this wearing a body warmer and hearing the rain outside my window.

When it comes to defining words such as "success" and "failure" - what do these mean in the context of mountaineering? Reaching the summit may seem the obvious "success" definition - but what about coming back down alive regardless of whether the summit was reached? Surely that could be a success, as dying on the mountain, would, in most people's eyes, be seen as a tragic failure…

There’s a lot of scientific research papers written on the chemical structure, shape and rock origin of the stones used on traditional Italian Alpine roofs. I have to say I only realised that when I searched for photographs that others had taken of the roofs.

After a number of false starts, I’ve decided to bring PhotoStory.photos into the fold if you like. No longer out there fending for itself, it now auto-forwards any visitors to this blog page. It also provides me with a reason to create a first blog post on this recently revamped website. Why all the changes…?