Welcome to Unnamed-Unclimbed!

The theme of this year's Royal Geographic Society Young Geographer of the Year Award is 'Yesterday's expedition, today's package holiday'. While this theme is made all the more poignant in the 50th anniversary of Tenzig Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary's successful summit of Mt. Everest, I think that it is best to view increased popularity of well-known mountains as incentive to turn back to the roots of exploration.

Read about the planned expedition to China's Kunlun Range here

As exploration and paid adventure become increasingly blurred, it becomes harder and harder to challenge oneself while being completely independent. While I'd love to complain about there being nothing left to explore, my time is better spent planning my next expedition than standing on a soapbox

Even within the realm of the known peaks, there are still those who push the physical limits of the extreme by summiting normal routes in the off-season, when popular bootpack is replaced my extreme temperatures and dangerous weather conditions. Others explore their personal limits by climbing established routes in days rather than weeks, often without sleeping, and surviving on energy supplements and water.

The question remains is what kind of ambition is required today to get to the summit? What drives people to explore beyond the boundaries of tourism? By exploring our own motivations and exploring the unknown, we all can hope to find these answers.