Who is the 2025 Wilderness Outdoor Photographer of the Year? No spoilers here: turn to page 28 to find out. We received a whopping 2600 entries this year. Thank you to everyone who entered, and        congratulations to the winners.

On page 34 Ray Salisbury writes about the classic Five Passes route. Every time I’m asked if I’ve done this trip, I cringe. A decade ago, I flew over from Australia with my partner to tackle it, but due to a series of stuff-ups, we had to turn back on the third day. 

It was a lesson in what not to do. I was a newbie tramper and left the logistics to my experienced partner – who downloaded a GPX that turned out to be a variation on the route, which we discovered while downclimbing slabs from Fohn Saddle to the Olivine Ledge in a storm. We retreated, only to become disorientated on the ridge in whiteout conditions. While we were trying to read the map my partner had a gear fail – waterproof pants that weren’t – and became dangerously wet and cold.

Eventually, we regained the saddle, dropped out of the wind, pitched our tent on the least slopey slope and got warm. When the rain eased we descended to the Beans Burn rock biv and hunkered down for 12 hours while the storm raged. We shared the biv with a family of five; the 13-year-old told us the usual route went right by Fohn Lakes, where we’d camped the previous night. The family completed the circuit, and we made the difficult decision to turn back. We had New Year’s Eve in the car park.

There were plenty of takeaways from that trip, among them not automatically assuming the more experienced person has it all under control, and watching out for the female tendency to defer to men. On the plus side, I got to sleep in a cave, learned to skill up and become more self-sufficient – and never to scrimp on wet weather gear.

Most of you will have had trips that didn’t go to plan; we’d love to know what they were and what they taught you.