The Adventure Trail: Ronnie Faux, the original adventure sports journalist
- A conversation with the journalist who pioneered what became known as ‘adventure sports’, from the peak of Mount Everest to wild ocean sailing
In this edition of The Adventure Trail Mark Agnew presents a special international edition, featuring his father, mountaineer Crispin Agnew as his co-host, and an in-depth conversation with Ronnie Faux, a journalist and published author who can be reasonably considered one of the first ‘adventure sports’ journalists.
Having answered the call to cover the army expedition to Mount Everest in 1976, Faux built a career out of covering everything that was sporting yet not ‘sport’ in the 1970s, back when the word ‘extreme’ was just a description for weather conditions and ‘the ‘gram’ was more likely to be a telegram.
The expedition was deemed a success as they got two men to the summit, and became some of the first people to survive a night at 8000 metres, where they sheltered in a snow cave.
He talks about how the challenges of technology and the eternal race to get a story published led to some interesting innovations, how he developed from a journalist into the celebrated author of West: A Sailing Companion to the West Coast of Scotland, and reflects upon the recent scenes of overcrowding and death on the Mount Everest trail that have gone global.
