The morning of March 14, 2017, Royal Robbins passed away, a man who stamped us with his elegance and class. The American Alpine Journal published an article of Royal’s in 1963, when I was a high school kid. I was moved especially by one line:What ...
ON JUNE 3, I free soloed Freerider on El Capitan, the culmination of an eight-year dream. The year and a half I took to actually realize the climb has, at this point, been well documented. The story of that journey is told in an upcoming documenta...
While researching a trip to India we discovered a Flickr Image folder from Martin Moran, which documented his trek over the Poat La and down the ZK Glacier, past unclimbed mountains he called Zanskar Matterhorn and Badile. Our goal was now clear,...
From May 25 to June 25, my husband, Antoine Trichot, and I climbed seven routes in the Cordillera Real, most of them new, and a few to summits that may have been unclimbed. For me, first ascents had long been a dream.Only 48 hours after arriving i...
Big-wall free solos and mountaineering first ascents don’t happen in a vacuum—they are part of (and are influenced by) the broader evolution of climbing performance. To provide context for the long climbs we have documented in this edition, we rec...
In late September, Daniela Teixeira and I headed to the Indian Himalaya. In order to acclimatize, we first went to the Parkachik Glacier, south of the Suru Valley, and walked up to its head, enjoying awesome views of the north and west faces of Nu...
I first met Liz Hawley in 1991, as the leader of the American Annapurna IV expedition, when she came to interview me at the Malla Hotel in Kathmandu. She was armed with the results of all of the previous expeditions to Annapurna IV, while I had pr...
The legendary Himalayan historian Elizabeth Hawley passed away on January 26, 2018, at the age of 94 in Kathmandu, Nepal. Although her remarkable life encompassed several distinctive chapters, climbers knew her as the chronicler of Himalayan climb...
Eleven years ago, on an ordinary cold spring morning in Castle Valley, Utah, I met a 16-year-old kid who unexpectedly would become my best friend. The memory is still vivid. After frantically trying to catch an inspiring father-son climbing team o...
In the austral spring of 2017, Tomy Aguilo and Julian Casanova (guides), Sebastian and Stephen Gallie, and I took a four-hour boat ride from Puerto Natales to the Canal de las Montañas on the east side of the Cordillera Sarmiento. We landed at the...
In early 2018, Tad McCrea and I made the first ascent of Cerro Chueco (47°13’46.7”S, 73°02’34.4”W). Clearly visible west of the Carretera Austral (highway), Cerro Chueco rises above a sea of glaciers and lush forest. Though not a giant, even mount...
On February 10 and 11, 2018, Felipe Cancino (Chile), Max Fisher (Canada), and I reached the summits of two previously unclimbed peaks on the Northern Patagonia Icefield (Campo de Hielo Norte). The first, Punta Pantagruel (2,410m), had already been...
I huddled over my gear on the slippery boat ramp of Francois Harbor on the southwest coast of Newfoundland, contents strewn about like a bomb had gone off. I wedged and crammed 200 pounds of climbing equipment and supplies for two weeks into my 18...
On July 25, as he was preparing to lower from a ledge, a climber fell about 15 meters to the ground. The climber was a member of a three-person team attempting a “mock multi-pitch climb” in preparation for a real multi-pitch objective later in the...
THE PATAGONIAN SEASON was marked by very unstable weather. This prevented any groundbreaking ascents, but a good time was had by most and for the first time in years there were no serious accidents. If bad weather is what it takes to accomplish t...
I first met Christchurch mountaineer Norman Hardie in May 1983, outside my favorite old bookshop in New Regent Street. At the time I was Field Operations Officer for the New Zealand Antarctic Research Programme, so I introduced myself and asked No...
After making the first ascent of the south face of Pico Tunari in June, Rodrigo Lobo and I decided that we simply had to climb all three of the most significant rock walls in the extensive Cordillera de Cocapata: Tunari’s south face, the southeast...
From June 21-22, during the austral winter, Rodrigo Lobo and I made the first ascent of the south face of Tunari (5,035m, 17°17'8"S, 66°23'30"W), a long escarpment situated well over 200km southeast of La Paz and clearly visible from Cochabamba, B...
AT THE END OF JANUARY, Christian Fascendini, Matěj Svojtka, and I arrived in Basaseachi National Park with one goal: to open a new line. We chose Rancho San Lorenzo as our base camp, an ideal and quiet place. The owner, Don Fernando, helped us a l...
On August 6 we lost yet another incredible man to the mountains that he loved. Tom Zajicek was killed in a 90-foot fall while descending Starlight Peak in the High Sierra of California. It was one week before his 67th birthday. I had the honor of ...