Victor Saunders was born in Lossiemouth and grew up in Malaya. He started climbing in the Alps in 1978 and has climbed in the Caucasus, India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan. He became a UIAGM mountain guide in 1996 after a career as an architect in London. He relocated to Chamonix, France and became a member of the SNGM (National Syndicate of French Mountain Guides) in 2003. He has been on more than ninety expeditions in mountain ranges including the Himalaya and Karakoram, and estimates that he has spent seven years of his life under canvas. His previous books include Elusive Summits, which won the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature in 1990; No Place to Fall; and Himalaya: The Tribulations of Mick & Vic, co-written with Mick Fowler, which won the Grand Prize at the Passy International Mountain Book Festival in 2015. His latest book, Structured Chaos, won the Mountain Literature (non-fiction) award at the 2021 Banff Mountain Book Competition.