His first book, Elusive Summits, won the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature in 1991.
Saunders first gained recognition for his climbing in 1978 with his first ascent of Shield Direct, Ben Nevis.
In the 1980s, he began to make expeditions to the Himalayas and the Karakoramwith fellow British climber Mick Fowler.
[8][9] In 2015, writer Eric Vola published Les Tribulations de Mick et Vic, a collection of climbing stories from Saunders and Fowler.
[12] In 2024, he and Fowler made the first ascent of the NW face of Yawash Sar, a 6,258m peak in Pakistan.
[13] Saunders is the son of George Von Saloschin, a Jewish immigrant from Munich who fled Germany with his family in 1936.