We first heard about Byeliy in 2009 from Nikolai Bandalet, during a joint expedition with Belorussians to Kyzyl Asker. At that time it was the highest unclimbed peak in the Western Kokshaal-Too. In December 2014 we were awarded a grant from the Mo...
The clock doesn’t lie. But sometimes it seems to bend the truth. In the mountains, time seems fluid, its viscosity changing unpredictably. In a storm, tentbound, the sludge of time barely oozes forward. Yet when racing darkness on a climb, time ru...
From February 20 to March 7, Paul Bride, Jesse Huey, Michael Pennings, Jon Walsh, and I visited the island of Senja, north of the Arctic Circle. During the first few days, Jon and Jesse climbed Finnkona (400m, WI6+), which they agreed was one of t...
Bernadette Zak and I went to Greenland with the aim of free climbing the ca 1,000m west face of Ulamertorsuaq (old spelling Ulamertorssuaq), specifically the unrepeated and poorly protected aid route Piteraq. This climb, established in 2000, lies ...
As a youth I hitchhiked around a lot, but the best lift I ever got was the one going to Greenland last summer. Paddy Barry was planning a sailing and climbing trip from Iceland to East Greenland and back. There was one free space. Several years ag...
Dean Potter is one of the few people in sports history to have pushed the limits in multiple, widely disparate disciplines. Yet he saw his pursuits as arts and not as sport—himself as an artist not an athlete. He was a climber before the gym era, ...
Erwan Lelann and Emeline Son are on a four-year, round-the-world trip with their yacht, Maewan, and are being joined from time to time by different parties for sporting adventures. We joined them in the winter of 2014-’15 to ski in the vicinity of...
I first saw Eagle Peak East (5,300m) in the fall of 2013, after completing the first ascent of Dayantianwo in the Shuangqiao Valley (AAJ 2014). While enjoying the spectacular view from the summit, my wife, Szu-ting Yi, and I noticed a large shark’...
Number 4 is the new free route Human Centipede 5. See images below for complete route listings. Photo by Brian Smoot. I have long dreamed of standing on top of obscure and puzzling big walls, and the Red Sentinel in...
Scott Adamson and I arrived at Choktoi base camp on July 4 with permits for Ogre II and Latok I. This was my sixth expedition to Pakistan, and it was by far the warmest Karakoram season I have experienced. As Scott and I acclimated during the firs...
Other than expedition organizer Leo Houlding, the journey to Greenland was a first for us all. Joe Mohle from South Africa, Waldo Etherington, photographer Matt Pycroft, and I (U.K.) were relatively inexperienced and very apprehensive about the jo...
In early July my brother Andy and I boarded a plane to Tasiilaq on Greenland’s east coast with the aim of reaching a remote fjord I had reconnoitered in 2014 with Andy Mann, and had failed to reach on three previous expeditions. I had flown to the...
During the approach to Huang Guan Feng (Crown Peak) in 2014 (AAJ 2015), I saw a striking ice line on the northeast face of Abi (5,694m). In late January, Enzo Oddo (France) was around and psyched to make an alpine ascent, and I felt this would be ...
The central Zaalayskiy Range from the north. (1) Start of 2015 traverse. (2) Spur climbed during 2001 first ascent of Kurumdy I. (3) Descent from 2015 traverse. (A) Pik 5,995m. (B) Zarya Vostoka (6,349m). (C) Kurumdy East II (“Pik Kathi”). (D) Kur...
Chomotang (left) and Nigutse South seen from Sirsir La to the northeast. I first noticed Chomotang on Google Earth during one of my regular cyber-tours of the world’s mountain ranges. It seemed to stand out from its surrounds, being the highest i...
At the start of January 2016, my friends Jiri Lautner, Filip Martinek, David Michovsky, and I, all Czech, climbed a new route on Jebel Misht. We choose a line 50m to the right of the route Make Love Not War (2003) on the southeast face, the steepe...
During July, Eugene and Sergey Glazunov and Alexey Tyulyupo explored peaks in the long-forgotten Surmetash Valley. The expedition was only two weeks, but this was enough time for the team to make two first ascents of primarily rock routes, one on ...
In 2008, Audun Igesund from Norway went to the Nuuk area to meet local climber Aili Lage Labansen. The two put up Sortebærstien (ca 10 pitches, 5.8), on a wall at the southeast end of Storø, and climbed a handful of pitches at the start of the wes...
The goal of the 23rd Bulgarian Antarctic Expedition was to take differential GPS measurements of certain prominent landmarks in the mountains and reach previously unclimbed summits in the Tangra Range. We first established an “advanced base”—Camp ...
From December 2011 to February 2012, I led an Eagle Ski Club party to the Peninsula, where we made ascents from the Sikorsky Glacier (AAJ 2012), southeast of Cierva Cove. In the 2015-’16 season I returned to the Sikorsky with a group of Australian...