About me. I was born and raised in Nottingham, England but moved when I was young to New York City where my love for the mountains and climbing was nurtured.
It sounds strange to say that, being in a big urban concrete jungle that I became closer to the mountains but working as a bartender in the city enabled me to take extended leaves from my job, allowing multiple trips to the Cascades and further afield to Nepal, Tibet and Pakistan.
Mountaineering became my passion after my first trip to Nepal in the 90's and I have called Kathmandu home for the majority of the year for the past 25 years, where I have run the mountaineering expedition company, Altitude Junkies Inc. from.
Back in the early 90’s, I lived and taught at the Tibet Mountaineering Guide School in Lhasa, Tibet. During this time, I had the good fortune to train many poor Tibetan boys and girls to become mountain guides, like their Nepal Sherpa cousins, and got to explore and climb in parts of Tibet that have never seen foreigners before. The school is still operational and I am glad to say those students, way back when, are now grown men and women and have their own families and some of them continue to teach at the school to this day. Many of them guide on Everest and Cho Oyu respectively each year.
My mountaineering activities have seen me travel all over the world from Alaska, Argentina, Canada, Chile, China, France, Japan, India, Italy, New Zealand, Pakistan, Peru, Scotland, Switzerland, Tibet, and my beloved adopted country of Nepal.
I have climbed on many of the worlds' highest peaks including over 60 expeditions to the 8,000-meter peaks including Everest (both the Nepal & Tibet sides), Annapurna, Kangchenjunga, Lhotse, Makalu, Cho Oyu, Dhaulagiri, Manaslu, Gasherbrum I, Broad Peak, Gasherbrum II and Shishapangma. Elsewhere in the Himalaya I have climbed on some of the smaller more technical peaks including Baruntse, Mustagh Ata, Ganesh I, Pumori, Kang Guru, Ama Dablam, and Cholatse.
I enjoy the big peaks but my favorite discipline is lightweight alpinism.
I find the Cordillera Blanca of Peru allows me to climb fast and light on 6,000-meter peaks once acclimatized. The climbing is varied and offers all levels of technical difficulty. The other draw of the Cordillera Blanca is the fact that it's reasonably priced in regards to transportation, accommodation and food not to mention the awesome beer. A huge plus factor is that there are no expensive climbing permits being needed.
The people of Peru are very hospitable like the people of Nepal, so it's not uncommon to find myself spending the summer season during the monsoon rains of Nepal down in South America trying new climbing objectives.
As I start to enter my twilight years of mountaineering and alpinism, I have switched my focus somewhat from the big Himalayan peaks to the smaller more technically challenging peaks of Peru and New Zealand.
I have kept a rental room in a house in Huaraz for the past ten years and rent a campervan each summer in New Zealand (New York winter) to keep myself disciplined with continuing to climb in these regions.
I will spend less time in the wonderful Nepal as I already feel like I have spent a lifetime there as I have called Kathmandu home for nearly three decades!
The Nepal expedition industry is changing, so are the rules and the major players. My old friends and associates have either passed on or retired, and a new generation of Sherpa guides are running the industry in a new direction with new values and a new leadership style that differs from the western guide approach.
I started this personal website about ten years ago as I got many emails from climbers wanting advice about gear and climbs. I will start to update it more frequently than I have done in the past as I will not have the excuse of time restraints due to packing for another major Himalayan expedition.
Phil Crampton - New York City, June 2026
Contact: info@altitudejunkies.com