The two-man ascent of Changabang, with Tasker, could not have been a more different undertaking, and was rated the hardest climb achieved in the Himalaya at the time in 1976. The route took over 25 days to ascend, and their use of big wall climbing techniques to overcome the serious, sustained difficulties was revolutionary. The book went on to win the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize in 1979.
A number of expeditions followed, and in 1975, he summited Everest via the South West face, as part of the second assault team, on an expedition on which fellow climber Mick Burke was tragically killed. In 1976 he joined forces with Joe Tasker and climbed the West Wall of Changabang, at its time probably the hardest Himalayan climb in the world. His book about the experience The Shining Mountain is one of the outstanding works of mountaineering literature, and won the 1979 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for literature. K2 in which climber Nick Estcourt was killed in an avalanche, Boardman successfully climbed Kangchenjunga in 1979 via the North Ridge. He returned to K2 in 1980, reaching a height of 7975 metres. He was killed on the North-North East ridge of Everest in 1982, along with his climbing partner Joe Tasker In 1992 Boardman's body was found by climbers from Kazakhstan in a sitting position near the Second Pinnacle 'looking like he was asleep'. Boardman's body was identified through photographs by relatives in the UK. The book Sacred Summits, being offered covers his climbs of three sacred mountains over one climbing year. The first, in the new year ,was the South Face of the Carstensz Pyramid in the Snow Mountains of New guinea, one of the most inaccessible of peaks and the highest peak in South east asia. In the Spring with Doug Scott, Joe Tasker and Georges Bettembourg they made a four man oxygenless attempt on Kanchenjunga the world’s third highest peak by the unclimbed North Ridge.
