“Get out of the way, quick!” I shouted, as calmly as possible considering the position I was in.It was summit day on our bid for the first ascent of the Black Diamond, an unclimbed wall in Zion National Park's Kolob Canyons region. I was 25’ up th...
Glacier National Park is a wild and remote place with sizable alpine terrain, full of possibility and uncertainty. Alpine climbing here often involves dodgy or nonexistent beta, long approaches, bushwhacks, bear encounters, and creative anchor-bui...
In late July, Adam Ferro and I hiked over the Whitney-Russell col and set up camp by a small tarn 500’ below Arctic Lake. From there we approached the long northeast face of Mt. Hitchcock, which consists of many subpeaks and attractive buttresses,...
For the past 15 years I have climbed on the often weird towers and canyons around Sedona. While the town’s New Age vibe is pretty lame, there are miles of cliffs to explore and occasionally a good climb. In the last three years I have become absor...
On May 21 an Indo-British party led by Francis Blunt, Adele Pennington, and I (U.K.), and Heera Singh and Mangal Singh (India), made the likely first ascent of the highest peak of the Vishnu Ghar Dhar Range.This range forms the southern fringe of ...
Lapche Kang II (7,250m, 28°18'01"N, 86°23'03"E) lies in the northern Himalaya, about 35km northwest of Cho Oyu, in a massif variously called Labuche Himal, Pamari Himal, or Lapche Kang. The highest summit, Lapche Kang I (a.k.a. Choksam, 7,367m), w...
From December 16–19, 2015, Giorgi Tepnadze and I, with the help of Davit Mchedlishvili until the last camp, made the first winter ascent of Shkhara South (4,320m), a small top on the south-southwest ridge of Shkhara West (5,068m). The 2,100m ascen...
In June my party climbed the south face of Donguz Orun (4,454m) via the Dolra Glacier. We reached the glacier via a two-day trek up the Dolra Valley, followed by a final steep ascent over granite slabs below the hanging seracs forming the snout of...
In early November, Rob Baker, Mitch Murray, and I reached a point about 20m below the top of the previously undocumented Xialong Rezha (5,625m, based on two altimeter readings). The peak lies at 29.886444°N, 99.511519°E to the west of the Genyen m...
From July 20–23, the Russian expedition of Olesya Babushkina, Marina Popova, Denis Prokofyev, and Vladimir Sysoev made the first ascent of the east face of the northern summit of the Great Walls of China. The team had planned to attempt a new line...
Several years ago, Tom Ruddy climbed an independent, direct line up the striking west face of Moro Rock, with hopes of completing an all-free ascent in the future. After several years of work, he had freed most of the route but moved away before p...
The North Sentinel is a tooth-shaped granite face on the north side of Kings Canyon, across from North Dome and below Grand Sentinel. With a straightforward approach, we were surprised it had not seen any previous attention from climbers. Over the...
Ushba is symbolic of the Caucasus. It is no surprise that this double-summited peak was an emblem of Soviet mountaineering clubs—and of Soviet mountaineering itself. There are many legends, songs, and stories connected with this harsh mountain. Th...
When Glenn Exum made the first ascent of the upper south ridge of the Grand Teton in 1931, he did so ropeless and wearing football cleats two sizes too large. The 18-year-old aspiring mountain guide negotiated an exposed traverse by leaping from...
Climbers have been belaying for as long as they’ve been using ropes. We use some type of belay in almost every roped climbing context—it is the essential skill that unites all disciplines. It’s interesting, therefore, to see how little agreement t...
Through my work as a guide, I’m privileged to see corners of the Lofoten Islands that a short-term visitor might not. Abrahamstind (ca 900m) is not in one of those corners. The northwest face is front and center and staring at the road, though gua...
On June 13 the well-known tourist attraction of Preikestolen (Pulpit Rock), which rises above the Lysefjorden in Rogoland and is internationally famous with BASE jumpers, gained a five-pitch new route from local climbers Jon Egil Auestad and Øyvin...
If somebody said you could still find 6,000m peaks in Nepal that were easy to approach, not technically challenging, and still unclimbed, would you believe them?In 2013, I had planned to explore a new route on Chulu East, but several weeks before ...
Standing on the edge of the moraine and surveying detritus of other climbers, Simon Verspeak and I saw our first ascent potentially unraveling. It was not surprising that another expedition had attempted the peak—its snowy pyramid of over 6,200m s...
Sometimes we simply need to change the way we look at a mountain in order to rejuvenate our climbing game. We did this with Himlung Himal, a classic 7,126m mountain above the Phu Valley. It is usually crowded with big groups in the autumn, but in ...