Mick Fowler: Taxman, Cancer Survivor & The World's Greatest Amateur Climber

26th July 2024 | Words by Matt Jones @ WildBounds HQ

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Grey-haired, bespectacled and now aged in his late sixties, Mick Fowler looks just like a tax inspector. Funnily enough, that’s exactly what he was. Over the course of four decades, he forged a successful career in the service of His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs department, the scourge of struggling, self-employed freelance writers everywhere (ahem). And life in the public sector clearly suited him, at least in some ways. When he eventually retired from full-time employment in 2017, he left HMRC as an assistant director.

But Mick Fowler has climbed far more than the corporate ladder over the course of a long and storied life. As you may suspect, he is more than he appears to be. Because away from the office, this is a man who has spent the best part of a half century relentlessly pursuing some of the world’s toughest and most remote mountain ascents. Indeed, his list of climbing firsts is so impressive that he has been dubbed “the world’s greatest amateur climber.”

His accolades are many and varied: a three-time winner of the Piolet d'Or in 2003, 2013, and 2016, for alpine-style first ascents of various faces in the Himalayas. (The Piolet d’Or or ‘Golden Ice Axe’ is alpinism’s biggest and arguably most coveted prize – they are sometimes jokingly called ‘the Oscars of mountaineering’). Fowler was also one of the first British rock climbers to free an E6 rock route (Linden, 1976) and the first ice climber to free a grade VI mixed Scottish winter route (The Shield Direct, 1979).

The Mountaineers' Mountaineer

But perhaps his greatest honour came in 1989, when he was voted the ‘Mountaineers’ Mountaineer’ in a poll of his peers by The Observer weekend newspaper. Fellow British climbing legend Sir Chris Bonington elaborated on this peer recognition in 2005, saying it: “reflected climber approval of his highly original approach to the sport.” Fowler’s choice of objectives over the years has certainly been esoteric, and even at times verged on the eccentric. You were as likely to find him perched on a crumbling sea stack somewhere off the British coast as you were halfway up an alpine north face. And for years he was just as enamoured by gnarly Scottish winter cragging missions as he was by the prospect of undertaking first expeditions to remote mountain ranges.

This glittering list of career highs should make it clear that the word ‘amateur’ is no slight on his mountaineering skills, nor his expertise or experience. Mick is simply an amateur in the truest, sporting sense: that is, someone who climbs out of pure passion, not for the money. This means that unlike professional mountaineers, he doesn’t make a living by pursuing lucrative brand sponsorships, from organising speaking tours and engagements or from leading wealthy clients on climbing trips in the world’s great ranges. Quite simply, he climbs for himself. In some ways, this gives him far more freedom than most climbers. On the other hand, it also means that he spent years juggling major expeditions with the myriad demands of family life and a challenging 9-to-5 day job. Many of his pioneering climbing feats were basically accomplished while he was on annual leave.

His life has also had its share of ups and downs, and not just in the mountains. In 2017, he underwent treatment for anal cancer which required him to use a colostomy bag. However, this did not stop him from climbing in the Himalayas in 2019, nor from claiming first ascents of new routes on sea stacks off the Irish coast in 2023.

Early years

Mick Fowler’s story started in London – admittedly, not a traditional hotbed for rock climbing. The family home was in Wembley, North London, but his formative climbs were with his father on southern sandstone crags in Kent. He soon discovered he was rather good at it, which quickly fostered an eagerness to explore UK climbing meccas further afield. Fowler remembers: “The great thing about being in London – which might sound rather strange – was that there was no climbing nearby. But there was a Climbing Club, the North London Mountaineering Club, where I gathered together a good group of friends. So, every weekend we would go away somewhere, which introduced me to different places, different rock types and the great outdoors that we have in the UK.”

In short, it was equally easy for the club to organise a climbing trip to the mountains of North Wales one weekend, then a trip to Cornwall’s sea cliffs the next. This quickly gave Mick a broad and well-rounded base of climbing knowledge. And because the climbing scene in these different areas was so open and sociable, it also meant he quickly got to know an awful lot of like-minded climbers from all over the UK.

However, it was winter climbing in Scotland that first captured his heart. He remembers: “It felt very exploratory and very adventurous, a bit like my later climbing in the Himalaya. I became very enthusiastic about this – such that I think my record was 11 consecutive weekends from London [to Scotland], with a lot of driving involved and a lot of quite sleepy Mondays in the office.”

From the Alps to the Himalaya

By the early 1980s Mick was well versed in Alpine climbing too. He’d spent five or six years visiting Europe and familiarising himself with Alpine routes, and had completed the classic North Faces, including the Eiger and the Matterhorn. Next, he turned his sights to South America – specifically, a 6,000-metre peak of the Peruvian Andes. “Most importantly, there were no specific permits required, so it was very easy to climb there,” says Mick.

He and fellow climber Chris Watts spent four nights ascending the South Face of Taulliraju, which they achieved in the Alpine style. This essentially means the climbing party is small and almost entirely self-sufficient. Rather than siege-style expeditions with multiple teams, camps stocked with supplies dotted along the route, ropes and fixed lines, and supplemental oxygen, Alpine style means carrying all your food, shelter and equipment with you, as you climb. “The climbing was absolutely the sort of climbing I love,” recalls Mick, “really steep rock walls with ice smears; lots of uncertainty about whether we'd be good enough and a fantastic feeling of elation when we were successful.”

In turn, this success further broadened Mick’s horizons. After all, in 3 weeks they’d managed to acclimatise and climb a 5,800m peak. “It was pretty clear to me that without much more time we’d be able to acclimatise to higher altitudes and go climbing in the Himalaya.” For the first time, he could see a way of balancing that with working full-time in the tax office as well.

The Himalaya had an understandable and irresistible allure. It is, after all, the world’s biggest and most famous mountain range. As well as having countless unclimbed mountaineering objectives, it also offered lots of cultural interest and centuries of climbing heritage. So, it was with a great sense of anticipation and excitement that he undertook his first Himalayan expedition in 1984. Unfortunately, it proved, in Mick’s own words, “a complete failure.” What went wrong? It was hard to put a finger on it, but perhaps being overly ambitious was part of the problem. “We climbed some very hard technical climbs before going and we thought we were great. But we failed absolutely dismally.”

But they say that often you learn more from your failures than your successes, and so it proved. Three years later, Mick successfully returned to the western Himalaya in northern Pakistan and climbed the 'Golden Pillar' Buttress of Spantik with partner Victor Saunders, in another groundbreaking Alpine style ascent.

It also formed the blueprint for the vast majority of Mick’s future objectives from then on in, many of which were borne out of practical considerations, given the need to fit them in around his job. He sums up the essential criteria as thus: “The mountain must be doable in four to five weeks from the UK. There has to be an obvious line; a striking line leading, hopefully, directly to the summit. The mountain has to be visible from afar. It has to be relatively safe from avalanches and rockfall and such like; and if it has a different descent route then so much the better. That's more aesthetically pleasing, to come down a different way. And finally, if it's in a culturally interesting area that I've not been to before, then that just about ticks all of the boxes that I set for myself.”

This template has been the basis of Mick’s climbing career ever since. He has deviated from it a few times over the years – he may be a taxman, but he isn’t too binary about these things – but in essence, it sums up his approach to identifying, planning and executing any big mountain expedition.

Success and survival

His record of successes is impressive, as is his longevity. It is commonly said that “there are old climbers and bold climbers, but there are no old, bold climbers.” However, Mick Fowler has proved one of the few exceptions. Part of this he credits to meticulous planning, with hours spent poring over Alpine journals, photographs (and more recently, Google Earth images), studying every available angle of a given mountain. The global growth and popularity of the expedition tourism and trekking industry – particularly in the Himalaya – has also made in-country logistics much easier.

He also points out that advances in technical equipment have helped massively. “Everything nowadays is so much lighter and so much more waterproof.” In this, he is being somewhat modest – since he neglects to mention that he has worked with brands such as Berghaus for well over a decade as a gear and equipment tester. Many of the most significant technological innovations of recent years, from moisture-resistant down to body-mapped insulated clothing, have been fostered and refined by his own first-hand input and feedback.

The rest of his success he credits to his climbing partners. “You need to know that they're the sort of person that has perhaps the same tolerance of risk as you have. That in a certain situation, they're likely to behave in much the same way as you. With those thoughts in mind, most of my climbing partners over the years have been people that I've climbed with for a very long time.” What does he look for in a partner? “Not particularly having a tremendous ability, but having a good, safe approach to mountaineering.”

Mick has also never forgotten that at its core, climbing should also be fun. “I’m always looking for an adventure that will leave a good memory.” And he acknowledges that often, the small adventures can be every bit as rewarding as the big ones.

That’s just as well, since over the years, the pressures of juggling his climbing career with family and work life have sometimes squeezed the time available for the mountains into very short, very tight windows. He acknowledges that this has been his biggest challenge, but a vital one to nurture. “Family’s always been extremely important to me. Work has been important to me too, as much as it’s a secure form of income to give me enough money to go climbing and to give the family enough money to have a good life.”

He’d be the first to admit that working for HMRC isn’t the world’s most exciting occupation, but he stuck with the tax office for practical reasons that, in the end, proved a convenient and financially prudent way to enjoy the different aspects of his life. “Initially it was a job that I took just to earn some money between alpine seasons back in the 1970s. It sat comfortably if contrastingly with my mountaineering holidays, where I would forget completely about tax things and my tax office job.”

But equally, he found that in the office, he could somehow forget about mountaineering and focus on the job at hand. In similar vein, when he was at home, he just got on with his family responsibilities – he’s been married to his artist wife Nicki Duggan since 1991, and they have two children.

Coping with cancer

But this handy compartmentalisation technique was shattered by a tumultuous life event in 2016 that caused his separate worlds to collide. “Within 6 months of retiring I was given a cancer diagnosis; cancer of the anus. I had to cancel a mountaineering trip at short notice”. How did he cope with the devastating news? “I'm a very pragmatic kind of person. The doctors told me that I had cancer, but I never really felt ill. Eventually, after radiotherapy and chemotherapy failed, it was decided that they should remove my entire rectum and anus. I can remember I still felt perfectly well. I was sitting with a consultant, and I can remember his words. He said, ‘I think we're able to offer you this operation – would you like to go ahead?’ I replied, ‘Well, are you actually sure that I'm ill? Because I don't feel it.’”

After getting reassurance from the consultant that this was in fact, not only a necessary but also a potentially life-saving procedure, Mick agreed to have the surgery, knowing that when he came round, he’d have to use a colostomy bag for the rest of his life. “After that I think it was a matter of accepting what was happening. There was nothing whatsoever that I could do about the cancer.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mick’s diagnosis and recovery provoked an outpouring of support from all quarters – family and friends, former work colleagues, and of course, a large sector of the climbing world.

Obviously, the operation stopped him from climbing for the period that he was convalescing, but thereafter he vowed to return to action as soon as possible. In fact, he found himself on a mountain just eight months after surgery, something which, he now concedes, “was probably a bit too early to be honest.” But he has completed several further expeditions since 2018, and despite the inevitable physical decline that comes with age, says he will carry on climbing for as long as it is still enjoyable and as long as he is able to do so.

He's also spent more time returning to – and in some ways, rediscovering – his first mountain love: Scotland. “I think we're incredibly lucky in the UK. We have such a varied country, both from the point of view of climbing, and the scenery in general. We have access land in the mountains and the right to roam in Scotland. We can explore, within reason, wherever we want to – we have a wonderful footpath network. I live in Matlock on the edge of the Peak District and I just love walking around the footpaths, exploring the countryside [and] exercising the dog.”

With 50 years of pioneering climbing under his belt, it’s gratifying to hear that Mick Fowler can still enjoy the simpler pleasures of time in the open air. But then, that’s no surprise – throughout his climbing career, this most gifted of amateurs has always been driven by a love for landscapes, for elemental experiences in the great outdoors. And such memories can be forged anywhere – whether here at home or in the high Himalaya.