Alan Hinkes is burbling, chattering on about the few hundred feet of frozen Scottish cliff he's been hanging off for most of the day. He's standing outside a restaurant in Aviemore, trying to get decent reception on his mobile, speculating about the weather forecast. If possible he'll be back doing it all again tomorrow.

Hinkes is feeling optimistic for the first time in a couple of years. His plan to climb every peak on the planet higher than 8,000m (26,246ft) has been stalled for the past two years. But now he is preparing to fly out to Nepal to restart the campaign. 'I didn't feel I had to force myself to go if I didn't want to,' he says. 'And I didn't feel right mentally and physically. My motivation wasn't quite there.'

After dozens of expeditions to the Himalayas, and the deaths of several close friends, he has learned to trust his instincts. He was on K2 with Alison Hargreaves before her death in 1995, and climbed with Ginette Harrison, Britain's other high-altitude female climber, who died in an avalanche in 2000. He knows just how dangerous this game can be.

After Sir Chris Bonington, Hinkes is Britain's most famous climber. A former schoolteacher, he knows how to sell himself, and with the 8,000m peaks he has a challenge that the public can understand.

Munro-bagging, the name for climbing all Scotland's mountains over 900m (3,000ft) , is just about a national sport north of the border, and the Himalayan version is just an extreme form of the same. People understand what he does, and that's made him popular with sponsors. Only nine men have completed the list before him, starting with Italian climber Reinhold Messner in 1986.

Some climbers spend time reflecting on the point of climbing, but Hinkes just gets on with the job. 'Someone asked me what use mountaineering was,' he says. 'It's an odd question. Nobody ever asks why a swimmer swims, or a footballer kicks a ball. It's a personal achievement. Climbing is all about freedom.'

Hinkes is a dogged performer, returning again and again to mountains such as K2, waiting for conditions to be right. He's also endured a series of bizarre accidents. Falling off a path on the approach to Makalu, in Nepal, left his thigh speared by a bamboo pole, and in 1997 he put his back out sneezing on chapati flour, and had to abandon his attempt on Nanga Parbat, one of Pakistan's five 8,000m summits.

Showing typical Yorkshire grit, Hinkes went back to Nanga Parbat the following year with a sponsorship deal from a chapati manufacturer in his back pocket, and climbed what he regards as the most dangerous of the 14. 'It's known as a hard mountain. The first time I was on it I nearly got wiped out in a rock-fall. There were huge rocks the size of sofas crashing all around me.'

After Hinkes broke his arm in 2000 falling into a crevasse while climbing Kangchenjunga, the world's third-highest peak, some climbers speculated that he would call it a day. Then in early 2001 his grandmother, who brought Hinkes up, died. 'She was 100,' he says, 'but I was poleaxed.' After that, the foot and mouth crisis sent the outdoor activities industry into crisis and sponsorship disappeared. Some even doubted that the 47-year-old still had enough in him to take on these gigantic mountains.

None of it has stopped him. 'I've got the brain of a 14-year-old according to my daughter,' he says. He still has to climb Kangchenjunga, the mountain where he broke his arm, but it's Annapurna, in central Nepal, that worries him most.

'It has a reputation for avalanches and icy outcrops. Dhaulagiri looks the easiest but then Ginette [Harrison] died there, so you can never take anything for granted. There's no such thing as a straightforward 8,000m climb.' · Alan Hinkes will be speaking at The Outdoors Show, which is at the Birmingham NEC, 15-17 March.

The monster peaks
1: Everest (8,850m) Nepal/Tibet Climbed by Hinkes in 1996
2: K2 (8,611m) Pakistan/China Climbed by Hinkes in 1995
3: Kangchenjunga (8,586m) Nepal/India
4: Lhotse (8,516) Nepal/Tibet Climbed by Hinkes in 1997
5: Makalu (8,463m) Nepal/Tibet Climbed by Hinkes in 1999
6: Cho Oyu (8,201m) Nepal/Tibet Climbed by Hinkes in 1990
7: Dhaulagiri (8,167m) Nepal
8: Manaslu (8,163m) Nepal Climbed by Hinkes in 1988
9: Nanga Parbat (8,125m) Pakistan Climbed by Hinkes in 1998
10: Annapurna (8,091m) Nepal
11: Gasherbrum I (8,068m) Pakistan Climbed by Hinkes in 1996
12: Broad Peak (8,047m) Pakistan Climbed by Hinkes in 1996
13: Shisha Pangma (8,046m) Tibet Climbed by Hinkes in 1987
14: Gasherbrum II (8,035m) Pakistan Climbed by Hinkes in 1996