By evening, I found myself agreeing to pitch a tent on the banks of the Arno for an illegal bivouac in the heart of Florence.
The tour includes the city of Meknes, the Roman ruins of Volubilis, and a stay in a desert bivouac at Merzouga.
San Francisco in the summer of 1849 looked like "the bivouac of an army on the move", writes Brands; most of the buildings "were actually tents".
Rather than risk descending in the dark, they bivouacked in a snow cave close to the South Summit at 28,750 feet (8,750 metres), this was the highest bivouac in climbing history until Babu Chiri Sherpa bivouacked on the summit itself in 1999.
The first Bulgarian to reach the summit, Christo Prodanov, climbed without supplemental oxygen, was forced to bivouac overnight during the descent, and died one of four summiteers who climbed without oxygen in the 1980s and failed to return.
They were compelled to bivouac quite a distance below it (May 25) and the next day reached the summit of the Éperon, at 26,300 feet (8,016 metres), whence they descended to the col and pitched camp.
After a harrowing descent, during which Venables was forced to bivouac overnight without a tent, all four members of the team made it back to the Base Camp.
In 1861 the Capitol was used temporarily to bivouac federal soldiers who had been hastily dispatched to protect Washington from an attack by the Confederacy.
A company called Jersey Odyssey offers a walk based on nature foraging and camp-craft, which can be extended to an overnighter complete with bivouac building, edible plant collecting and campfire cooking.
When Scott and Haston climbed the summit, posing for photographs in the fast disappearing sunset and being forced to bivouac in the snow, the mountain's peak was measured at 29,029ft.
I woke up to find a text saying, "We're benighted in Dent Blanche, can you ring the hut keeper [at the foot of the mountain]." So I rang but no one answered and I thought, "Crap they're all out looking for Dan and his dad!" Spending a night out with no bivouac is a recipe for frostbite or possible death.
