Portraits of adventure

Climber Todd Skinner sleeps on a narrow ledge near the summit of 420-metre spire Kaga Pamari in Timbuktu, Mali, Africa. The team dubbed the climb ‘the Harmattan rodeo’ because of the thrashing winds that shook them as they ascended Photograph: Bobby Model

Austrian ‘Fearless Felix’ Baumgartner holds the record for the world’s highest BASE jump – off the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur – and, far more dangerously, the world’s lowest BASE jump, from Brazil’s iconic Christ the Redeemer statue, pictured here Photograph: Reuters

Sometimes you can find adventure on your own doorstep. Although not exactly the Himalayas, the Brecon Beacons in South Wales provided teaching assistant and amateur photographer Ron Tear with his own Everest Photograph: Ron Tear

Sir Ranulph Fiennes bleeding from the nose after being hit by a falling chunk of ice when climbing Mont Blanc Photograph: Martin Hartley

When journalist James May and photographer Richard Newton set out to investigate the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline in 2001, they had to use the only route in: the notorious ‘Haul Road’. This 414-mile stretch of gravel is the main trucking supply route from Fairbanks to the Prudhoe Bay oilfields, and it is one of the world’s most treacherous roads Photograph: Richard Newton

The image captured by photographer Eric Nathan shows an abseiler (the yellow speck on the left) descending only the bottom quarter of Lesotho’s Maletsunyane Falls. At four times the height of Niagara, it is home to one of the longest abseils in the world – a terrifying 192m drop Photograph: Eric Nathan

It’s called El Camino de la Muerte, meaning ‘death road’, and it sees around 100 fatalities per year. Only 43 miles long, the muddy Bolivian thoroughfare plummets over 975 metres in a relentless series of switchbacks with sheer vertical drops at every turn – yet visitors to the road, including around 250 mountain bikers a day during the peak season, insist the astounding mountain scenery mitigates the alarming risks of traversing it Photograph: Matt Harvey

The Xhosa people of South Africa are probably best known for their most famous son, Nelson Mandela, but many Xhosa live far from the modern world, deep in the Transkei region on the country’s Eastern Cape. This picture captures the most important adventure in these boys’ lives – their initiation into manhood, which involves five weeks of isolation Photograph: Brent Stirton