IAN R. MITCHELL was born in Aberdeen but he's spent most of the last three decades wandering through mountains. He began walking and climbing in the Cairngorms in the 1960s, and he's since built up considerable knowledge of the Scottish Highlands and also further afield--the Alps, the Pyrenees and Norway. He now lives in Glasgow and is the author of several award-winning walking books. In 1991 he was jointly awarded the Boardman-Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature. He was also awarded the Outdoor Writers Guild Award for Excellence for his book Scotland's Mountains Before the Mountaineers.