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2024 Judges
The Judging Panel for the 2024 Boardman Tasker Award is:
chair of judges
paul pritchard
Paul was a cutting-edge climber and mountaineer hailing from Lancashire. His climbing adventures took him from Wales to the Himalayas, from Baffin Island to Patagonia.
When he won the The Boardman/Tasker Award for Mountain Literature in 1997, with his debut book Deep Play, he cashed in the prize money on a world climbing tour. He found himself in Tasmania climbing a slender ‘sea-stack’ known as The Totem Pole.
It was a Friday the 13th in 1998 a TV-sized boulder fell and inflicted such a terrible head injury that doctors thought he might never walk or even speak again. His partner Celia Bull had to haul him 30m to a ledge and run for 7km for help. He lost use of his right side and couldn’t talk for many months.
Being in hospital for a year gave Paul the impetus to write his second book: The Totem Pole. This narrative about his personal journey through hemiplegia won him an unprecedented second Boardman/Tasker Award and the Banff Mountain Book Festival Grand Prize.
He has written four books; most recent book, The Mountain Path was shortlisted for the Boardman/Tasker Award and a Banff Mountain Literature Prize.
Paul now lives with his partner and children in Tasmania pushing a life of writing, though his day job is as a diversity and inclusion educator.
Joanna Croston
Joanna Croston grew up and went to university in Eastern Canada and moved to the Canadian Rockies permanently in 1998. She has climbed many of the classic 11,000 ft peaks in the area and is an avid backcountry skier having toured throughout North America, The Alps, Japan, Kashmir and the Indian Himalaya.
As a voracious reader of mountain literature and a die-hard film enthusiast, she is the Director for the Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival and World Tour. Her writing has appeared in Highline Magazine, Gripped, The Canadian Alpine Journal, The Canadian Rockies Annual, Mountain Life and Alpinist. She is the author of Breaking Trail: The Chic Scott Story and her work is part of the Waymaking anthology, an award-winning collection of women’s adventure writing published in Autumn 2018. She serves on the Mountain Culture Committee of the Alpine Club of Canada and is the former North American representative for the International Alliance for Mountain Film. She is currently working on a book about women in mountaineering.
Rehan Siddiqui
Rehan has been a climber, mountaineer, and skier for over fifty years. He is a member of the Climbers Club, Alpine Club and Kandahar Ski Club.
Rehan started climbing on gritstone quarries around Manchester as a teenager, then moving on to all the major climbing areas in England, Scotland, and Wales. This led to climbing and mountaineering in Europe, Africa, North America, Australia, and Asia.
Rehan is a keen skier and ski-tourer. He is currently learning to Cross Country ski.
Rehan has served as Vice President and President of The British Mountaineering Council (BMC). He is an honorary Member of the BMC.
A word from our supporting partner
Mountain Equipment is proud to be associated with the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature, one of the most prestigious and respected international literary awards, and we’re delighted to be able to officially support it.
Climbing, mountaineering, and Alpinism in particular, have always been more than just a physical pursuit, and mountaineering literature more than just a physical record. Few other activities can have compelled so many of its participants to express themselves through writing, and even fewer seen so many of its most celebrated protagonists prove their worth as authors, a fact that the Award has sought to recognise and celebrate.
For sixty years we have been closely associated with Alpinism and we owe much to Pete and Joe, and those that they climbed with, not only for their achievements but for the generations since that they have challenged and inspired. We hope that by supporting the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature we can encourage others help to experience and understand the mountain environment through literature.
ABOUT MOUNTAIN EQUIPMENT
Since 1961 Mountain Equipment has been at the forefront of Alpinism. Our philosophy is built around the pursuit of a raw, no-fuss, simple and lightweight approach to both mountaineering and life, where Alpinism is more than just how we climb, but about our entire approach to life and how we choose to live.