Mick Fowler was introduced to climbing in the Swiss and French Alps by his father when he was thirteen and soon developed an unstoppable enthusiasm for the sport. Every weekend through the winter climbing season he would make the long drive from London to tackle new winter routes in the Scottish Highlands, always managing to be back behind his desk on Monday morning. His dedication paid off. Fowler became one the UK's foremost mountaineers, putting up new routes in most fields of climbing, with first ascents of gritstone E5s, remote sea stacks and the frozen drainpipes of London St Pancras to his name. Along the way, he helped develop a whole new style of climbing on the chalk cliffs of Dover. But it is for mountaineering that Fowler is best known. He has made 'challenging' climbs across the world, earning him the prestigious Piolet d'Or and the title of 'Mountaineer's Mountaineer' in a poll in The Observer. Remarkably, his climbing has taken place alongside a full-time job at the tax office, squeezing major mountaineering objectives into his holidays and earning him another title - 'Britain's hardest-climbing tax collector.'
