At the start of 2020, many of the world’s top rock climbers were training for the Olympic Games, scheduled to begin in Tokyo in July. By March, COVID-19 had postponed the Olympics and forced most climbers into lockdown. With eased restrictions in ...
At around 7 a.m. on Wednesday, February 3, 2021, a New Hampshire Fish and Game officer contacted the Mount Washington Avalanche Center to ask for assistance in locating the vehicle of an individual who had been reported missing the previous night....
On January 22, 2021, at 3:20 p.m., a skier was caught by an avalanche triggered by his party and carried from near the top of Left Gully almost to the floor of Tuckerman Ravine. An approximately six-inch slab of new and wind-deposited snow release...
Just after 8 a.m. on February 14, 2021, Rider 1 parked at the trailhead for Mt. Trelease and noticed one car already in the parking area. As Rider 1 ascended the skin track, he deduced there was one backcountry tourer ahead of him (Rider 2), based...
On February 4 at around 11:10 a.m., two skiers were caught by an avalanche in an area east of the Vail resort known locally as Marvin’s West or Big Marvin. This is a steep, east-facing slope below treeline that is dissected by two cliff bands in t...
At midday on December 15, Rider 1 and Skier 2, a married couple and Crested Butte residents, left for a short tour. Rider 1 traveled on a splitboard, while Skier 2 was on lightweight touring skis. Since their plan was to ski up and descend the sno...
On the morning of January 8, 2021, a group of six skiers (one female and five males) met in Cooke City and decided to ski the Fin on Republic Mountain. None of them had been to this particular slope or mountain before. All members carried an avala...
On February 22, 2021, a group of two splitboarders and one skier toured from Taggart Lake trailhead up 25 Short (so named because the peak is 25 feet short of 10,000) to descend the Broken Thumb Couloir into Avalanche Canyon. This is a very narrow...
On the morning of February 6, 2021, two different groups (eight people total) went to ski the Wilson Glades, a north-facing, 500-foot run just below the 9,950-foot summit of Wilson Peak. On the day of the accident, the avalanche danger was rated a...
A backcountry skier and snowboarder were caught in an avalanche near Etna Summit, about 40 miles west of Mt. Shasta, at approximately 2 p.m. on February 3, 2021. Both individuals had many years of backcountry experience, carried avalanche rescue g...
In the afternoon of Saturday, April 10, 2021, a group of three skiers loaded Chair 2 at Alpental ski area to access terrain beyond the area boundary. They had been skiing inbounds in the Alpental back bowls for a large part of the day. Upon reachi...
On March 6, my best friend Nolan Smythe, 26, and I were on the second day of a free ascent of Logical Progression, a 28-pitch 5.13 big-wall sport climb on El Gigante. Nolan was leading pitch 14. The sun had just gone down, and we had two moderate ...
A party of three was climbing Grillmair Chimneys, an eight-pitch 5.6 route on Yamnuska, on May 24. When the leader fell on pitch three, the rope dragged over a rock rib separating two gullies and the sheath was cut, exposing the core. The leader b...
Jughaul Wall is a three-pitch Bow Valley trad classic. I’d climbed it without incident three times over the past 18 years. This time, as I neared the top of the first pitch (5.5), I saw two shiny new bolts above a small ledge. I assumed this was w...
On August 26, an experienced, 38-year-old, male climber was leading an unknown sport route on Gardener’s Wall at Grassi Lakes. The climber fell about 40 feet to the ground after the belayer lost control of the rope. During the fall, the climber hi...
On July 20, a party of three made their second attempt to traverse Mt. Rundle from Canmore to Banff. They had attempted the traverse earlier in the summer and made it to a bivy site just beneath Peak 7. They aborted the attempt at that time becaus...
On August 28, an experienced party set out to climb Homage to the Spider (5.10a) on Mt. Louis, near Banff. The route is an alpine rock climb with a three-hour approach. It starts with a few hundred meters of third-and fourth-class scrambling to re...
A party of two climbers spent August 13 on Super Brewer, a long alpine rock climb that links the Ultra Brewer and Brewer Buttress routes on Castle Mountain. Ultra Brewer (330m, III 5.9) climbs to the Goat Plateau, a large ledge system at mid-heigh...
On July 28, two climbers were attempting a new route on the quartzite cliff known as the Saddleback Wall, near Lake Louise. They were one or two pitches up the four-pitch wall when the leader pulled off a loose block and took a fall. The gear held...
On July 22, three climbers were on The Search, a 5.10 sport route at the Back of the Lake crag. This pitch starts off a large ledge about 20 meters above the ground. At around 3 p.m., the leader fell while climbing above the fourth bolt and impact...