When I see a moon-bow or a sundog, I usually just say "Wow!" or "Hey!" Sometimes on a mountain, I look out across scree and corrie, srón and lairig – and say nothing at all.
This year saw a particularly hairy scramble to "thread" Napes Needle, a pinnacle that juts up sharply from a scree slope against the steep side of Great Gable.
The final length of the ridgeline stands as a rocky comb of shale against the sky, dropping down on either side to wide scree slopes and rocky bluffs and nothing.
And an unedifying pile the latter is too: how the climbers extracted flesh samples from Mallory's forearm for DNA testing, how they prised his head out of the frozen scree to take hair cuttings and how they felt compelled to sell photographs of the battered corpse around the world.
Its surface is of rocky scree.
The islands rise steeply from shores lined with rock and pebble debris (scree, or talus) to heights reaching 7,713 feet (2,351 metres) above sea level on Pico, the highest point in metropolitan Portugal.
On May 1 members of the team found Mallory's body lying on a scree terrace below the Yellow Band at about 26,700 feet (8,140 metres).
In the Low Arctic, most land surfaces are fully vegetated, with the exception of rock outcrops, dry ridge tops, river gravel bars, and scree slopes (those slopes that have an accumulation of rocky debris at the angle of repose).
Rising above the desert plain southeast of Lake Amadeus, Mount Conner is flat-topped and horseshoe-shaped and reaches to 2,500 feet (760 metres) above sea level; its lower 500 feet (150 metres) are covered by a talus (scree) slope, while the highest 300 feet (90 metres) are sheer cliffs.
Starting from the tiny Tyrolean village of Boden, all wooden houses and geranium windowboxes, I climbed up a forested valley towards the etched ridges and clenched fists of the limestone Alps, passing meadowing cattle, cooling off in waterfalls and clambering through scree runs en route.
