Daniel Joll and I climbed a new route on the south face of Mt. Aspiring (3,033m) on September 6. The route climbs through the right-hand side of the lower rock band before traversing left across the central ice fields and finishing directly up an ...
During July I teamed up with New Zealand expat Gregg Beisly for our annual exploration of the cordilleras Real and Occidental. Gregg lives with his family in Bolivia and works with a youth leadership program in the shantytown of El Alto, above La ...
In April a 13-member Korean team—the Vision Expedition, led by Kim Tae-Hoon—climbed Dragmorpa Ri (6,185m) on the Tibetan border, west of the upper reaches of the main Langtang Glacier. The group arrived at its 4,700m base camp on April 10, and on ...
Dancing with the gusts of winter wind, Natalia Martinez and I inched onto the summit that had long been the focus of our dreams. It was 10:45 p.m. and pitch dark. More than simply the high point of a mountain, this peak was the validation of years...
“Until one is committed there is hesitancy.... The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred.” —W.H. Murray Nineteen-thousand-foot glaciated pea...
On October 4, Scott Adamson, Angela Van Wiemeersch, and I established a new ice and mixed line, The One Who Knocks (550’, WI6 M5 R/X), on the northeast face of Reids Peak (11,708’) in the Uinta Mountains of northeastern Utah. I scouted the line in...
On July 5, Mary Ann Overfelt and I set out to tackle the West Slabs of Mt. Olympus (1,600’, 5.5), east of Salt Lake City. We started hiking a bit later than we would have liked, but still reached the start of the route about 11 a.m. A few other pa...
In early October, Jonathan “JD” Merritt and I climbed a long ice and mixed route on the north side of Peak 12,878’, a sub-peak just northeast of Shoshoni Peak (12,967’) in the central Indian Peaks. I first scouted the route after a deep two-day fr...
For several years Mark Jenkins and I had wanted to climb together in the mountains of Wyoming, where he has done many new routes. In mid-August the stars aligned and we planned a week in the vicinity of Cloud Peak (13,167’) in the Bighorn Mountain...
What was going on? Odd-Roar was awakened by the sound of a slide coming from above. When the first ice blocks hit the portaledge, he threw himself into the wall, half on top of Ole, covering his head as best he could. A few anxious seconds late...
[Editor’s note: Pat Goodman won a 2009 Lyman Spitzer Cutting-Edge Award from the AAC. This report on his permit frustrations in October 2009 is reprinted from the AAC’s trip reports.]The five Chinese men and women stood confident, and in an odd wa...
In 1989 Kurt Albert, Wolfgang Güllich, Milan Sykora, and Christoph Stiegler climbed one of the most beautiful routes in the world: Eternal Flame on Trango Tower. They aided only four pitches, climbing approximately 80 percent of the route free on ...
As far as we know, there have been only two or three attempts on Gasherbrum VI (7,004m), all via the south face, directly above Gasherbrum base camp. The latest was by Jean-Noël Urban and two friends in 1998. They retreated from very high on the m...
Our group of 10, with Kiomars Babazadeh as leader and me as climbing leader, started toward Broad Peak on June 23. Our goal was the first new route in the Himalaya by Iranian climbers. On our way to base camp, we met the French climber Ludo Giambi...
Basile Petiot, Benoit Monfort, and Mathieu Detrie from France and I (from Belgium) traveled to Pakistan in July, hoping to climb the direct northeast pillar of Uli Biaho (6,109m), a virgin line of 2,100m. This is composed of two distinct parts. Th...
Only six Korean teams have successfully put up first ascents on 7,000m peaks. Nearly all of these have been made in either capsule or expedition style. Kim Hyung-il, who in 2009 climbed a new route in alpine style on the northwest face of Spantik ...
In 2011, together with Alex Txikon from Spain, we spent more than 50 days making the first attempt to climb Gasherbrum I in winter. The approach to this mountain had never been done on foot in winter; we took seven days to walk from Askole to base...
A new route on the huge northwest face of Great Trango, climbed by Galina Chibitok from Russia and Marina Kopteva and Anna Yasinskaya from the Ukraine, was awarded the 2011 Russian Piolet d’Or, the first time such an accolade has been bestowed on ...
In August Dmitry Golovchenko, Sergey Nilov, leader Viktor Volodin, and I, from the Moscow Mountaineering and Climbing Federation, planned to climb a new route on the north face of Trango Tower. However, prevailing conditions made the approach dang...
The Polish Winter Gasherbrum I expedition was organized by the Polish Alpine Association (PAA) and financed by the Ministry of Sports, as well as a group of commercial sponsors. The expedition was part of an important PAA program dubbed Polish Win...