Maiun (Mayun) Chhish (5,880m, 36°20'13"N, 74°27'58"E) rises directly above the western end of the main Hunza Valley and offers panoramic views of the Batura chain to its north and Rakaposhi to the south. The only known prior ascent was on August 9...
Longing for a true wilderness experience, in August I made two trips to the Cirque of the Moon, a desolate cirque approximately four miles east of the Cirque of the Towers. The result was three new routes of varying difficulty and quality. On Augu...
Climbers tend to snort when I suggest we visit my favorite crag. The slur “Pete’s Pile” was first hurled at this dirty, lichen-encrusted collection of basalt columns back in the late 1980s, when it was being developed by a scruffy ski patroller of...
On May 1, Damien Mast and I made the first ascent of the 2,200’ north face of Sheepshead (9,417’) in the Mission Mountains of northwest Montana. (This peak is also known locally as Sheep’s Head or West McDonald Peak.) The face had been attempted m...
Over three days in early July, Jonathan Schaffer and I established four new lines on Flatiron Butte's prominent east face. All routes were free-climbed ground-up, each in a single push and each about 900’ in length. To the best of our knowledge, o...
Adam Pecan and I met in Li Ming (Liming) and spent October and November establishing free routes to the tops of impressive walls in the main valley described in AAJ 2012 and 2013. The highest wall in the area, at just over 200m, is dubbed the Prim...
On June 13, Len Vanderstar and I set out on an expedition to make the first ascent of Thunder Mountain (9,097’, a.k.a. Mt. Nirvana) without air support. Before 2016, this peak—the highest mountain in the Northwest Territories—had seen five documen...
On June 24, Damien Nicodemi and I climbed a new route on the east face of Flatiron Butte, located to the north of Yosemite National Park in the Hoover Wilderness. The stunning prominence of the face and the solitude of the cirque where the peak is...
On June 5, Neal Harder, Chris LaBounty, and I established the Surge (1,000', 5.8) on the Fortress, in the Castle Rocks area of Sequoia National Park. Our route follows face and flake features to the right of the only other established route, the S...
When you're driving toward Kings Canyon, there are some giant marble buttresses on the left side of the road, but you have to cross the Kings River to get to them. In the case of Boyden Cave Wall, near the popular Boyden Cavern in Giant Sequoia Na...
Between April 1 and 11, Canadian alpinist Marc-André Leclerc and I climbed three new routes in the Valley of the Ten Peaks. We had only recently tied in together for the first time, sharing a rope on March 27, when we climbed the Greenwood-Locke R...
A French “Roc Aventure Programme” team from the Fédération Française de la Montagne et de l’Escalade (FFME) completed a new route on the left side Candameña Canyon, about half an hour from Basaseachi Falls, in October. Six young climbers—Kevin Agl...
On November 29, British climbers Greg Boswell and Nick Bullock were descending in the dark from a reconnaissance of a very difficult mixed route high on the west side of Mt. Wilson, above the Icefields Parkway, when a grizzly bear attacked Boswell...
On August 7, a pair of climbers set out to attempt a new route on the north face of Chancellor Peak. After climbing a considerable distance, they encountered poor conditions and decided to traverse to the northwest ridge to complete their ascent. ...
On August 15, 2014, Will Richardson-Little and I started hiking toward the Grand Sentinel at 7:20 a.m. from the Moraine Lake parking lot. Our objective was to climb the normal route on the south face (4 pitches, 5.9). We had a standard rack, doubl...
On July 24, Banff Dispatch was relayed a 911 call from a climber whose partner had just taken a 15-meter leader fall on the upper cliffs of Castle Mountain. They indicated they were at the bottom of a popular route, Brewer Buttress (III 5.6), on t...
Late in the afternoon of July 28, a lone 30-year-old male was traversing the exposed alpine rock ridge heading southwest from the summit of Mt. Whyte toward Popes Peak. Partway across this traverse, the subject dislodged some loose rocks and fell ...
On April 28, two climbers were descending a single-pitch route known as Aces High on Casino Wall. One of the climbers rappelled off the ends of the rope. He fell about five meters and landed on his back, sustaining a lower back injury described as...
A female climber in her 20s was bouldering at the base of Ha Ling Peak, near Canmore, on March 27. A piece of the boulder detached and crushed her pelvis. She was evacuated from the scene utilizing a wheeled stretcher.ANALYSIS The climber failed t...
At 5:30 a.m. on February 5, two climbers set out to climb Polar Circus, a 700-meter ice climb on Mt. Cirrus. It had snowed lightly overnight and continued to snow during the day. Later in the afternoon, they observed snow sloughing off the steep c...