On September 13, Maya Humeau (female, 22) fell from a large ledge at the start of Cary Granite (5.11c), a five-pitch route on the Black Wall, near Mt. Evans. Humeau and her climbing partner, Mathias Gruber (male), were a very experienced team. Th...
On July 31, Leon Sparks (44) fell while attempting to climb 14,175-foot El Diente Peak in the San Juan Mountains. His plan was to approach via Navajo Lake and complete the standard loop that summits El Diente Peak, Mt. Wilson, and Wilson Peak. In ...
In the late morning of April 30, Andrew Whiteside (male, 67) fell while leading the first pitch of Otto’s Route (5 pitches, 5.8+). The first pitch is 5.4 and starts on the northwest side of the formation, climbing a ramp with some chopped steps be...
The 2007 summer edition of Alpinist magazine contained a profile of Mt. Huntington (12,240') in which Clay Wadman described the peak as part of what he called The Realm, “a place savage, yet fragile, so sublime it existed completely beyond human e...
Paul Ramsden at the foot of the crux ramp on day two of the climb of the north face of Jugal Spire. This passage, hidden from below, was the key to the route the climbers eventually called The Phantom Line. Photo by Tim Miller. COVID was terr...
My world is damp, my sleeping bag is limp and clammy, I can’t remember the last time I could feel my toes. Every few seconds, I hear the drip from the fly onto the inside of our portaledge. My phone and Kindle are both dead, probably waterlogged. ...
The Ritual of Hardship (500m of climbing, 7b/6c+ obl.), the first route up the southeast face of Anafi’s Mt. Kalamos. Two earlier routes end near the monastery circled in the photo. Drone photo by Kyriakos Rossidis. Ten years ago, during a fl...
Our initial plan was to open a new route on the south face of the main (south) summit of Ushba (4,710m). However, the weather forecast was not very good, with a risk of storms in the afternoons. So our trio—Basque climbers Julen Berrueko, Jon Inor...
In July and August, Sam Spector and I attempted several unclimbed summits from a base camp at 3,943m below the Kotur Glacier in the Western Kokshaal-too. This we reached in a day from Naryn thanks to travel firm ITMC, our driver Anton, and his off...
Dane Steadman (25), Jared Vilhauer (42), and I (41) traveled to the Western Kokshaal-too mountains of Kyrgyzstan for the month of September. We choose this time frame based on two factors: 1) the temperatures are significantly cooler than in m...
On December 4, Nathaniel Masahi Takatsuno (22) fell to his death while free soloing Leonids, a three-pitch 5.9 on the Wedge at El Cajon Mountain. Climber Michael Sandler witnessed the accident. In his report to Accidents, he wrote, “As we were wa...
On Wednesday, September 28, Chelsea Walsh (33), a documentary filmmaker, and Gavin Escobar (31), an ex–Dallas Cowboys football player, died in a fall at Tahquitz Rock (Lily Rock). The Riverside Mountain Rescue Unit (RMRU) responded to the accident...
On March 26, Tina Fiori (51) fell approximately 60 to 80 feet to the ground from a sport route called Turkey Terror (5.9) on the Wailing Sax Wall. Matt Himmelstein (55) was climbing with Fiori and one other climber. He later reported on Facebook ...
The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department reported that on the morning of January 18, Michael Spitz (35) was found dead by by two hikers at the base of Illusion Dweller (5.10b) in Joshua Tree National Park. The Riverside County Coroner’s Office es...
On August 13, a 911 caller reported that a male climber had fallen from Matthes Crest. The initial report stated the climber, part of a team of five, had taken a long fall and potentially sustained an open leg fracture. After the SAR team was noti...
On June 22, at approximately 9:15 a.m., Yosemite dispatch received a 911 call from two distressed and stranded climbers four pitches up the Southeast Buttress of Cathedral Peak (5 pitches, 5.6). The climbers humbly said they were “incompetent, exh...
On April 23, the Yosemite Search and Rescue team (YOSAR) responded to a call from two climbers stranded near the top of Pacific Ocean Wall (28 pitches, VI 5.9 A3+) on El Capitan. The climbers were uninjured, but after weathering a multi-day winter...
On June 28, at 10:59 a.m., Yosemite Dispatch received a report of a 42-year-old male who had taken an approximately 50-foot climbing fall on The Prow (V 5.8 C2) on Washington Column. The climber’s plan had been a multi-day, aid-solo ascent. On the...
On August 1 at 1:58 p.m., Yosemite Dispatch received a 911 call from Jack Evans (male, 20s) stating that his climbing partner, Anna Parsons (female, 21), had taken a fall of approximately 80 feet on the third pitch of Snake Dike (8 pitches, 5.7). ...
At 10:30 a.m. on May 14, Climber 1 (male, 27) and Climber 2 (male, 26) arrived at Kombucha Crag, a waterfront cliff north of San Francisco. They both had over four years of climbing experience, indoors and outdoors. After several hours of climbing...