In 1986 he moved to Llanberis in North Wales, climbing extensively on the slate of the Llanberis quarries and on the sea cliffs at Gogarth, situated between North Stack and South Stack, near Holyhead. He gained a reputation for climbing hard and very poorly protected routes such as Super Calabrese (E8 6b) at Gogarth, still considered one of the most serious routes in the UK. In 1990, he began mountaineering, and subsequently climbed many difficult mountain routes around the world. This also included multiple attempts on the then unclimbed Shark's Fin on Meru Peak, in the Indian Himalayan Region. He won the 1997 Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature for his book Deep Play.